


Don Juan Conquered

by aquandrian



Category: Phantom of the Opera - Lloyd Webber
Genre: BDSM, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-07-27
Updated: 2007-07-27
Packaged: 2018-04-28 22:42:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 29,580
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5108258
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aquandrian/pseuds/aquandrian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Her body is not her own. He will put his hands on her, into her, and draw out her secrets. She will earn the sin.</p><p> </p><p>For thamiris.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Don Juan Conquered

This is a Christine of silence, a different sort of actress. Her songbird voice trapped under the stone in her throat, her vulnerability hidden under her white white face. Christine who is growing up, changed by marriage, changed by a man’s touch, her husband’s sanctified possessive touch, and she not responding the way she had expected.

It happens the very first time. Not at the sealing of their vows when he puts back her veil, not when he kisses her at the wedding feast with the sweetness of wine on their shared breath. It doesn’t happen when they’re finally alone by the light of one flickering candle on a moonless night, not when she closes her eyes and kisses her new husband with all chaste hope and love.

No, it happens at the very worst of moments.

Breached and shocked, horrified at the pain, Christine cries out, sees her scream reflected in Raoul’s distressed eyes. Her body is suddenly not her own. That place between her thighs stings, hurts in a terrible unnatural unfamiliar way. And she remembers.

“… the joys of the flesh …”

Virgin, virgin, virgin. No longer, she.

Raoul slips from her, hovering and anxious, asking if she’s all right, saying her name over and over again in that careful voice. Her love, her childhood sweetheart. Songs and picnics, violins in the attic. Her father husband.

It isn’t supposed to be like this.

Christine blinks away her tears and smiles shakily up at him. “It’s all right,” she says. With arms and mouth and splayed legs, she urges him back. Her bridal nightgown is caught high on her thighs between them. He sweats through his thin fine shirt, concerned eyes watching her. Christine forces herself to look back. This is the act of love, she will grow to like it.

She must.

Raoul knows enough to try and please her. With his fingers, his mouth, seeking out places on her body. She watches him with equal parts bewilderment and wonder, gasps a little at the flutter of sensation. He tries all these things and it makes her wonder who taught him. And then she feels shame. Is it a wife’s place to wonder these things, to even feel jealous of the women he’s loved before her?

No, not loved. That other word, harsh and casually tossed between stagehands in the wings. Yet that too, strangely alluring.

Is what Raoul does to her fucking?

Before God and the Virgin in the sacrament of their marriage bed, it could not be fucking. What goes on in half lit alleys, grunts and moans in dark corners of theatre storerooms, what the young chorus girls had whispered and giggled about between themselves.

Raoul makes no sound when he’s atop her. His breath hitches, sweat breaks across his forehead, sometimes the veins on his throat stand out and his hair falls loose and brown across his face. She watches him always with some bemusement. He is beloved, she knows every contour of that face, how his smile breaks like sunshine, how his eyes soften and brighten when they fall on her. 

She knows that face like her own but not ever like this. He is never Raoul when atop her, pushing inside with increasing desperation. He disappears behind his eyes, behind the physicality of the act. He goes somewhere else and leaves this breathless desperate stranger trying to get ever deeper into her, closer to the core of her.

And he never does.

Her body is not her own when he tries to have it. Yet there is always that cool hollow place inside her that he never seems to reach. Body breached though she is, moving through the first year of their marriage, Christine still feels strangely untouched.

It cannot be right.

“ … denied me the joys of the flesh …”

The married women talk with less and less caution around her. Yes, she was once the demure child bride but surely not now, not with that fine figure of a vicomte in her bed. They ask her if he’s as virile as he seems. When first she had blushed and they chuckled, now Christine perfects the art of the subtle smile and they laugh with outright bawdy glee.

So it seems she’s not yet done with double lives. It’s a masquerade in the dazzling daylight of garden parties and the incandescent candlelight of society balls. It’s easy in the sunshine, in company, so very easy to be in love, bright and happy. And innocent. Raoul brushes his lips against the curve of her temple and she smiles at nothing, brilliant and young and lovely. The Vicomte and Vicomtesse de Chagny who, she discovers gradually, aren’t that different to all the other married couples alienated from each other.

Except it wasn’t supposed to be like this.

And she can only find fault with herself, not him. Never him. Because he doesn’t press her, he loves her too much for that insensitivity. Or maybe he just doesn’t know what to say. As the nocturnal visits peter out, Raoul watches her with agonised longing. She can feel him wanting so much to make it all right for her. Which only makes it that much worse. She doesn’t know what to say, what to do, who to ask, never felt more alone and helpless.

Six months become a year and her belly remains flat, her courses uninterrupted. Were it not for the wound of her memory, she could well have always been chaste virginal Christine Daae in her white white dress glowing in the stage lights.

That Christine had sung her swollen romantic heart out to the people and the gods, had sung for the celestial harmonies. The Vicomtesse de Chagny moves on an entirely different stage, always in an awful loneliness, trapped in the night of her own silent body, where the people watch and judge and do not applaud, where her voice stays in her throat and she finds the words inside run together, melt and coagulate, congeal into an ever thickening darkness around the tiny white light of her voice that had once soared.

There is no possibility of return to that life. The Opera Populaire is a tomb of toppled rafters and decaying drapes, of ashes and agony. All the people she had tried to make family have dispersed and disappeared into the widening world. The chorus girls and stagehands, Firmin and André, Mme Giry who always seemed to know much more than she’d say, and Meg, dear sweet Meg who knew her best and not at all. 

Of course none of them could be living the grandeur she enjoys, no clean sheets and beautiful clothes, with servants and horses and presents of jewellery from a solicitous husband. She knows how lucky she is. It could be a life of straw beds and rats in the dark, torn curtains of semi-privacy and ever gnawing stomachs, battling to keep more than her voice pure. From orphan of music to this. She knows to count her blessings.

So there’s no place for her there, even less for a vicomtesse. She’s left that life behind. And when she looks at Raoul down the length of a laden dinner table as he laughs with some marquise under a luminous chandelier, it’s clear he’s left the nightmare behind. They came too close to losing each other and maybe that too is why he’s so ready to give her all the time she needs. 

Whatever you need, Christine.

__________________

 

The other wives take lovers, each with a varying degree of discretion. And oh of course the husbands do too. There’s no secret about that. For a while Christine watches Raoul anxiously, searching for some sign that his patience has worn thin and eroded to infidelity.

But he only has eyes and tentative caresses for her. And she knows she’d know if ever his feelings changed. Body betrayed as she is, her heart stays true and so does his.

How else could it be?

At least in that she need not pretend. The circles of old and young wives, true and wandering, only have to look at her to know, and only have to see the way the vicomte’s eyes follow his wife. But she never judges them and so they talk around her.

Assignations, secret tokens, not so secret love bites and pleasure bruises. Christine watches and listens, vaguely horrified and always fascinated by the act, the elaborations, the peripheral intrigue and always the inherent basic wrongness, the sin of it all.

To lie with a man who isn’t yours.

But then is she Raoul’s?

How it must be for him. Tears burn at the corners of her eyes, blinked furiously away as she forces her attention back to the conversation of confession and exhibition.

And here too are varying degrees of sin. Is that possible? The young wife shackled to an old uncaring man, is it a sin for her to find solace in a sweetheart’s arms? The older woman scorned and abused by her drunken husband, is it wrong for her to find love in another woman’s arms? The wives judge and commiserate where they will. And Christine finds herself thinking deeper and harder about all these shades of grey, all the many ways an idealised happiness can corrode at the edges and decay within, all these horrible injustices ripping holes in the loveliness of what should be.

Because there are also those wives who take lovers on any old whim in any old place, fucking where they will and concealing every telltale sign. Secrets of pox cures are exchanged, names of backroom surgeons and places of convalescence before they return to their farces of marriage.

Those stories make her skin crawl but she knows better than to excuse herself and flee. That would be taken as a judgement and turn them against her, and this semblance of friendship is the only society she has left. So Christine keeps her hands in her lap, looking from the beadwork on this gown to the embroidery on that gown to the shimmering two-tone of this gown, makes the appropriate noises of consolation and gathers information she doesn’t want.

They tell of weekends away and parties and orgies and clubs, of brothels where not just men are catered for, where women caress women, and young boys are offered to women who can afford them, and men offer a whole range of services to women.

Christine hears and struggles to believe, to accept these bewildering possibilities of vice and immorality. But then doesn’t she know that money can buy anything? And this old world is changing, a new era dawning where women are speaking out, daring to write like men, daring to march in the streets and demand their own voices. Why should this be any different?

She thinks about this for a long while, distracted out of her habitual coolness. The wives take no notice. Raoul does see the slight change but if he wonders, he says nothing and maybe he waits for something more.

She knows she could never take a lover. That’s an impossibility, something not even to be considered.

But the shades of grey creep ever closer around her. These places, these brothels for women. If money can buy anything and she has plenty of that, perhaps there could be a way out of this frozen nightmare. Christine goes to church and kneels in the pew, thinking about a different future in which she learns. Learns to be a woman, to be a wife, to own her body and understand his. To be not so helpless and bewildered.

How could that be wrong?

She makes up her mind when Raoul goes away on matters of business. It’s early winter and the streets are dusted with snow melting rapidly to dirty slush. She is anonymous in an old gown that hangs loose on her thinner self, hooded against the cold and against familiar eyes. In her mind is the address gleaned from one of those careless gloating conversations. In her purse is enough money to assure discretion. Or at least she hopes.

None of this must touch the Vicomte de Chagny, not the slightest breath of association or hint of scandal. She won’t do that to him. But she will do this for Raoul, for their marriage, the love and loving that is their right. Call her a foolish romantic.

The place is called La Maison Vert, situated just between the seedier of districts and the more affluent area. It makes perfect sense, perfect access for all levels of society. Still her heart hammers in her throat as she goes up the narrow steps from the cobblestone street. A simple forest green door, unmarked and unadorned save for a dull brass knocker. A little nauseous with nerves, Christine raps, ducking her head as a carriage clops down the twilight street behind her.

A panel slides open and a woman with purple shimmer around dark eyes looks out. “Yes?” Imperious and unwelcoming but that makes sense. Christine rallies her determination and recites the secret phrase. There’s a glimpse of green and purple brocaded walls behind the woman as strains of a soft violin waft out on smoky air and Christine’s eyes prickle with tears at this unexpected reminder.

The green door swings inward and Christine steps into warmth, the scent of perfume mingling with smoke stealing around her. The woman introduces herself as Mme Dedalus, those purple dark eyes keen and careful. Christine’s anxious enough to skip all the small talk and be quite blunt.

“I have money,” she says, “I don’t want to do anything.” The woman’s brows arch slowly, her hair a dark soft cloud around an unremarkable face.

“I only,” Christine falters, “want to watch.”

This, for some reason, is amusing. Mme Dedalus smiles with surprising compassion and suddenly Christine understands she is not the first to ask, it’s not so unusual. So perhaps, she thinks as she follows Mme Dedalus down the corridor, perhaps more than one marriage has been remedied this way. She can only hope, can’t she?

Mme Dedalus offers her a glass of wine, says she’d like for them to talk a while so she can know how to help Christine. In a parlour that looks no different from any number of society drawing rooms, Christine forces herself to relax. And it’s a very nice wine that helps to ease her nerves, the compassion and attention of Mme Dedalus serving to loosen her tongue.

For the first time, Christine unburdens herself. And oh it’s such a relief to actually say all those tearful shameful things out loud. How much she’d wanted him, how much she’d come to dread those hesitant taps on her chamber door, and the way her body would tense up and resist his touch. She never says Raoul’s name, hasn’t even given her own. But Mme Dedalus doesn’t ask for it, simply asks the occasional careful question, and listens to Christine unpacking her bruised bewildered heart.

They only talk for that first visit, for which Christine is grateful. “I want you to think about what you want to see,” says Mme Dedalus, “whatever you want, it doesn’t matter how small or strange. When you come back, you tell me and I’ll arrange it. Don’t fear, no one will ever see you but me. No one need know about this.”

Magic words, those. No one need ever know. Christine walks out through the green door with a heart lighter than it’s been since that first awful night. The city is bright in the winter dark, the air fresh against her cheek. She walks home through the damp streets with hope warming her blood, hugging that tender future with Raoul close to her chest.

__________________

 

“Love,” she tells Mme Dedalus. “I want to see how it should be, perfect and beautiful. I want to see what a wedding night should be.”

The lady inclines her head and leaves the parlour for a little while. Her cape laid over the chair back, Christine looks curiously around, taking the opportunity to examine what she’d been too agitated before to notice. Wonders if that was sadness she’d seen in the soft face.

Perhaps it’s a bit disappointing that there isn’t a single lewd or even suggestive artwork or piece in the green and purple parlour. Christine runs her fingertips over the brocade wallpaper, lingers by the dimpled glass of the street window, and wonders how it will be. Will she lose her courage and not be able to even watch? Oh please, no.

At length, the parlour door opens and Mme Dedalus gestures to follow. They don’t speak and in any case Christine can’t think of anything to say. Now for the first time, she senses how far this may take her from everything Raoul thinks of her.

But then maybe he doesn’t know all there is to her. She could surprise him. She will surprise him. Her breath steady, Christine nods when Mme Dedalus tells her to make herself comfortable in this room that looks like any lady’s chamber. Except where there would be a big dark wardrobe is a long wide mirror reflecting an entirely different room back at her.

Christine catches her breath, badly frightened for a moment. But this time she’s the one inside the glass and she approaches, increasingly fascinated. The room beyond is empty, another bedchamber gently lit. A fine white nightgown lies draped across the side of the bed, delicate and chaste against the deep red covers. And there comes a girl, no older than her, darkhaired and thin in a sumptuous pure bridal dress. Christine’s skin ripples with a tiny jolt.

It’s fascinating, familiar and just a little unnerving to see the play that unfolds, a small opera performed just for her. Her life that could have been, could still be. The young bride undresses and Christine notes with a latent professional interest how the girl plays the tremulous anticipation and hint of nerves. Her body nude is quite different though, just the quickest glimpse of full breast tipped dark and the shocking telltale sign of shaven curve between pale thighs. Christine blushes a little but forces herself to watch.

There’s a deep armchair placed just off to one side of the mirror. Though she can see fairly well from there, it’s not good enough. And there’s no one to see when she drags the armchair to prime position before the mirror. This is her show, she ought to have —

“Box Five.”

— the best seat in the house. Her face a little warm, Christine settles back, arms tight around herself, and watches her not-self look at her own reflection. Chaste white virginal nightgown skimming a body that is and isn’t hers.

Then there’s the tap on the door and Christine starts in tandem with the not-Christine. The young man who enters looks nothing like Raoul but that air of anxiety is so familiar. And oh they do play the love so well. How he kisses her gently, so sweetly, his hand shy of her waist. Christine’s eyes dampen a little. It’s exactly how it should be.

The soundless murmurs, the caresses, the gentle worship of bodies, his of hers and, to Christine’s surprise and wonders, hers of his. They don’t shed their clothing but he kisses her through the thin nightgown, leaving the material sheer and clinging to her responsive flesh. Christine doesn’t know when she gets up from the armchair but she’s at the mirror, hand on the glass, when not-Raoul moves between not-Christine’s legs.

The bed is situated sideways to the mirror, nothing but several feet of air and distance and the inch thick of glass between them and her. So she sees every brush of hand, every fraction of glimpsed skin between fabric, the hint of vivid swollen flesh that he presses against her. The white fabric rucked up on white splayed thighs, and the tremble of fear and love and desire upon that female face. Christine feels heat gather at the nape of her neck, the trickle of sweat between her breasts, her gown feels suddenly a little too tight and a little too coarse against her skin.

When he breaches her, it is not an invasion. He guides her hand to that strange obscured part of him, watches her face changing with wonder. At the glass, Christine frowns but moves closer. And she watches as he’s guided in, as the girl who is not her gasps and clutches but urges him deeper, wraps her legs around his hips and arches up closer into his body. He is taken in, Christine sees it on his face, the shock and awe and delirium of consummation. Sweat and loosening hair and the flex of muscle, clench of thigh and fingers digging into back. Christine stands at the mirror, unmoving and alien, watching the final chorus of a song she doesn’t know.

She pays Mme Dedalus and leaves in silence. And she thinks, grim and close-mouthed, and says nothing when the wives convene in a chatter of scandal and intrigue. She doesn’t hear anything they say, hands folded in her lap. Her mind is full of what was and what she’d seen and what next?

__________________

 

“I want to be taught,” she says with an honesty that makes her own face redden. “I don’t want to be touched but I want to see, I want to learn. About me, about what it’s like to be a woman.”

In a woman’s body.

On the other side of the same glass, she watches another woman, a different one, explore her own body. Caught in a permanent blush, Christine watches. She doesn’t touch herself in that room, simply looks hard and memorises and is shocked at the sight of single-handed ecstasy. Her face burning, she pays Mme Dedalus and does not touch herself for several days.

Raoul is still across the Channel on increasingly complicated business. Yet he manages to write every few days and she writes polite little notes back that say nothing of what she’s seen and what knowledge she carries within.

Then one night, bathed and sweet smelling, alone in her bed in the cool white dimness, Christine tries. It feels exactly like self-abuse, like she’s forcing her flesh to learn unwilling. Sweaty and unfulfilled, she lets her aching wrist fall and stares at the despairing slivered moon.

Is there no hope at all?

“It will take time,” says Mme Dedalus. “These things do not happen in an instant. You have to learn your body and your body has to learn you.”

Don’t despair, it will happen. Yet she does lose more of that shining hope, feeling betrayed once more by her unresponsive flesh.

But she still goes to the green house and she asks to see more. Not the bridal night, not the lone woman. A different scenario each time. Weeks pass. Set on this trajectory, the acquisition of knowledge, Christine watches scene after scene of sexual congress.

The couple up against the wall, the couple simulating animals on the bed, the woman parading and shedding clothing for the man, the older woman seducing a younger gasping boy, the knight and lady, elfin queen and satyr, empress and footman. The scenarios grow ever more elaborate and she responds with varying degrees of intensity.

But mostly she’s bored and this doesn’t escape Mme Dedalus.

__________________

 

Raoul will sail back in two days and so Christine makes one last visit, trying not to get too anxious about his return. Perhaps they’ll try again, she may even go to him rather than wait for him to come to her.

Full of trepidation, she rises with a smile when Mme Dedalus enters the green and purple parlour. But before she can say anything, the lady says “I have had an idea, something new for you. Would you like to see?”

“Of course.”

To this point, the madam has suggested almost every scenario. So Christine doesn’t hesitate now, relegating the conversation to later.

It’s a different room this time. Up the stairs past the other floors of music and moans and the occasional throaty laugh. To the topmost level with no other rooms, just a single black door at the end of the long brocaded corridor. Mme Dedalus stays on the stair, putting a hand on Christine’s wrist.

“Remember, you may leave any time you wish. The door will be left unlocked. Remember.”

A little astonished, Christine acknowledges this and heads down the corridor. Not a sound in the still air, and there is only the flicker of the overhead gas lamp casting shadows to dance over the brocade. Unafraid, Christine puts her hand on the latch and pushes the door open.

The room turns a corner and goes down the length of the house. A long bare black walled room with glints of things in the shadows. Christine takes a few steps then stops with abrupt discomfort.

Something’s missing.

There’s no mirror. Only space and space and space. And a deep black high backed chair set in what she now knows to be the viewing position, facing the length of the room, facing the performance space. Her discomfort easing, Christine runs her fingertips along the bevelled edge of the high straight back. There on the cushioned seat is a spill of black material. It moves like liquid upon her fingers, curiously sheer and strong, a long narrow strip that she looks at for several moments before holding it tentatively to her face.

Ah.

No dividing shield of a mirror but protected by the shadows in this dark chair and this translucent blindfold. Intrigued, Christine takes her seat and it feels oddly right, oddly thrilling to place her hands along the bevelled armrests, her fingers curling along the curved ends. She breathes in, breathes deep and now smells something thick and sweet, like dead roses blooming in the night.

From somewhere high above winks on a spear of light piercing the heavy darkness to the centre of the room, a circle of white trained on an empty spot of black floorboard. Christine smiles faintly, knows a stage light when she sees it, the dust motes floating up in slanted bright air. 

There should be fanfare, a roll of drums and blare of trumpets, a soar of violins splitting the stillness. But no. There is no cue save for a sudden shift in texture and the sound of heel on wood. The shape of a woman emerges from the furthest shadows. Her shoes click slow steady and deliberate, the only measure of sound in the space as she approaches. 

When she steps into the light, she pauses. Christine recognises the perfect theatrical moment, the moment of poised stillness inviting scrutiny, demanding adoration. She’s tall, powerful, straight backed, clad in no gown but a garment of that same lustrous black material hugging every curve and contour of her body. Practically nude but for that single veiling layer. Her hair falls long and straight and black over her shoulders, her skin glossy and white, her implacable face bound by the same blindfold, eyes darkly lined through the sheerness. 

Once more, she is and isn’t Christine.

Mesmerised, Christine shrinks back in the shadows of the chair and watches as the woman extends her right hand out and up to the side. She holds a black handle and as she steps out of the light, further to the side shadows, the handle becomes a leash, the leash unwinds long black and leathery across the circle, it pulls and brings into the light the bound hands of a man. A man brought forward on the end of that leash, tall and impossibly lean, barefoot in simple black clothes, his bare shaven head bowed.

Christine leans forward without thinking, curiosity caught. There has never been a scenario like this. Could she ever have imagined it? How the woman circles him, running her hand over the breadth of shoulder, trailing the leash around his torso, slim black leather strap tautening against the thin black fabric of his shirt pulled across the breadth of lean chest. How the light glints on the pale strong curve of bowed head, sliding along the cut of averted cheekbone, delineating the subtle hint of a long downward groove by the corner of a straight slim mouth.

She can’t see his face properly and that’s all right because he stands very still, doesn’t even move when the woman unwinds the leash and drops it. The handle thuds to the floorboards before his naked feet. And Christine begins to understand when again he doesn’t move. 

No, this she never could have imagined. This she wants to see played out to the full final act. Her ankles hooked around each other under the chair, Christine sits forward and doesn’t blink, barely breathes.

His hands remain bound, long fingered fine hands locked together, the leash trailing on the floorboards. This time the woman slides her hand slower over shoulder across the barely moving expanse of chest and Christine can almost feel what she feels, the slight catch of fabric, the warmth and firmness of flesh beneath. From behind him, she begins to unbutton the thin black shirt, slipping her fingernails below to inches of skin. Christine catches glimpses of sparse fair hair on pale muscle. And oh it is an unbearable shiver of vulnerability with the slide of shirt from shoulder, revealing slice of skin, pectoral, nipple and the strong indented curve of bare shoulder. Christine catches her breath, her skin warming all over.

His nipple stiffens in the cooler air, a strange luscious reddish colour. And the woman strips the shirt down his arms, laughs low when it catches at his bound wrists. There is the silent glitter of metal as she takes a small knife from his trouser pocket and a few seconds later, there are the careless tatters of a shirt on the floorboards around the bare feet of a bare-chested stranger.

Christine looks her fill, unashamed and unafraid and oh yes most certainly wanting to see it all. She doesn’t need to say it, no need to do anything but breathe in when the woman moves her well shaped fingernails to the waist of black trousers. His chest is wide but lean and bone pale, nipples small and stiff, the light hair darkening and narrowing down to a fine alluring line that bisects the hard abdomen, his skin so white against the black line of trousers riding along the inward curve of hipbone. 

It’s so very delicious to see the woman’s hands unbutton and undo the material. No accidental hints of flesh, just one measured pause then a deft slide of fingers inside the waistband and a sure push downwards.

He is not erect. It doesn’t matter, in fact Christine likes this better, the sight of a wholly naked man with his hands tied and his head bowed, his feet bare and cold on the floorboards, his ankles finely boned, thighs long and white, belly hard but pale and exposed, and his sex curled soft and unthreatening, gently blushing against a thickening of deeper brown hair.

Christine stands without thinking, finds herself smiling faintly. This is how it should be. And now the woman’s hand moves with purpose, snaking down across the flinching abdomen to his sex.

Cock, says Christine to herself, unmoving. That rude word, as unsubtle and unpretty as the flesh itself uncurling and thickening, reddening with the pull and twist of skilled fingers. Now Christine wants to see his face, whether he fights this possession of his body, whether he feels it as she had felt it. But he keeps his face down and she takes a small step forward, all the better to catch the tensing of wide shoulders, hear the quickening catch of breath.

When the woman’s hand falls away, his cock is fully erect, a long heavy curve away from the shadow of hair and the strange muscled contour of abdomen. And sympathetic though she’d been, Christine can’t help but stare long and hard, looking and memorising and blushing a little at the thought of Raoul. That, was that what he always hurriedly hid between her thighs? That thing that tore her apart and filled her with impossible pressure? That, strange alien oddly beautiful and slightly ludicrous thing of blood and flesh, glistening in the light?

It’s all at once absurd and ordinary. Confused, Christine stumbles back against the chair, sitting sharply down. Watches with some absent bewilderment as the woman’s hand returns with a new vigour.

Now he does flinch but makes no sound as his cock is manipulated, tugged and worked, his breath quickening until even Christine can see how it costs him to keep composure. The blood rushes close under his skin, heat blushing down the cords of his throat, burning sweat over the heaving expanse of chest, down to the pearling length of his sleek cock. Christine forgets everything else, caught up in the energy and pursuit of pleasure.

And then, and then.

Without warning, the woman pushes him to his knees. Bone hits wood, the shock thuds up his spine and that spine cracks as he arches in orgasm and the woman catches his chin, pulls his face up to the bright light.

Christine goes rigid, a scream trapped in her throat, eyes wide, a roaring in her horrified head. It cannot be but it is, it is. The hideous malformed face, scarred terribly down one half, the straight slim mouth skewed to one side, and most shocking of all those eyes bright blue.

Blinded by the light.

__________________

 

Christine runs. Runs out the black door, skittering down the stairs, wild with terror, colliding with warm surprised female bodies. Christine flees from the calls and the colours and the looming darkness of a white light.

And she’s not crying but laughing. Soft hysteric jagged hiccups against the grimed bricks of a bleak alley, her skin going hot and cold, and shaking and shaking and shaking.

She’d left it all behind. That life in the half lit reflections, that nightmare on the water and under the fire. She had made up her mind and worked so very hard to forget, to make this new life in the clear light of day.

She had left him behind.

And somehow, somehow it had become like he never existed, never continued to exist. Fist against her mouth, Christine forces herself back into silence but her body still shakes, wracked with the horror of revelation.

She had never once thought of what might have happened to him. Led from the ruins of the Opera Populaire, Raoul had said “Let’s never speak of this again” and she’d been only too ready to agree. What had begun as protection, the delusion of self-preservation had turned into habit. Became fact.

And all that while he’d been so near.

Her breath shudders through her, becomes a cold white clarity in her head.

All that while here.

Her fingers curl into thin silky material, and she watches her night change texture as the blindfold comes away. Christine looks at the gleam of black trailing to the dirty cobblestones, looks at it for a long while, her heart slowing and breath easing.

Does this bind her to him once more? Oh god, please no.

But she saw and she cannot unsee. Him, him, her nameless ghost made flesh, cold marble flesh blushed hot and vulnerable, and changed, so exquisitely viciously changed.

Does pity come again too late? And no, she can’t do that. Not again, not when —

But Christine does push away from the brick, composure regained, and returns to the cold street. No one need know and all she wants is to know. A few salient facts and she’ll walk away, end this brief sojourn back into the dark. Better to transform Christine Daae completely into the Vicomtesse de Chagny and love Raoul the best she can, the best any woman under the sun could.

So she breathes in and walks up the steps again, gathering every bit of the vicomtesse grandeur about her. A man leaves just as she arrives so she slips through the green door and steadies herself at the sight of those stairs.

So near.

There’s a swish of fabric and Mme Dedalus appears out of the parlour, somewhat startled. Christine steps forward, drawing herself up proud. “I must speak with you.”

“Of course,” replies the madam without a moment’s pause, closing the parlour door firmly behind her. “This way, please.”

They say nothing until they’re alone in a sort of study, dark and wood panelled, lined with books and a small official looking desk. The polite thing would be to take the offered chair but Christine remains standing as Mme Dedalus moves to turn up the lamps. The madam’s face is quite calm, the great cloud of hair moving softly when she turns to Christine.

“You didn’t like what you saw? I’m sorry for that.” 

Christine pulls in a sharp breath, searching that face for any sign of conspiracy or malice. Did she know? Could she have known?

“Who,” she stammers and stops, annoyed with herself. But it’s enough to make Mme Dedalus’ face go smooth. The unmistakable glint of satisfaction appears in those eyes. And suddenly Christine sees a whole new horror. Grabs the back of the chair to support herself.

Mme Dedalus doesn’t seem to notice, merely sighs as she adjusts the blotting paper across the desk. “I thought you might find him interesting. Most of my clients do, you see. In fact,” and she laughs quietly, “most come to me directly after just like you, asking, wanting to know more.”

The purple lined eyes flick in Christine’s direction. And damning herself, Christine sits. “Tell me,” she says as imperiously as any duchesse. Mme Dedalus settles behind the desk, looking strangely different, more confident in this masculine study light.

“I’ll tell you what I tell them all. He is what he is.”

A freak. Christine sees the word as clear as if it’s scrawled wild between them.

“He doesn’t speak and never has, as far as we can tell. At first we thought it was part of his deformity or perhaps the result of torture, his tongue torn out in some war.”

Christine feels the colour drain from her face, the images exploding before her mind’s eye. That skewed mouth rent and bloody, violated, a hideous cavern screaming in silence. Robbed, raped of his voice, that soaring demonic voice. Oh sweet lord and master.

“But no, we examined him as we do all our girls and boys. And he’s perfectly whole, as much as we could see. He simply refuses to speak. And well, that’s not always an unattractive thing to our clientele.”

It only adds to his appeal. Oh yes. Christine sees it only too well, her mouth tightening. The freak paraded. Because people are ever curious about monstrous curiosities. So was she. 

“Where,” Christine says through a raw throat, “where did you find him?”

“Find him,” Mme Dedalus echoes, a little sharp.

Because maybe he was given no choice. Maybe out of the ashy cesspool of the catacombs, they had found and dragged him. Maybe they broke that spirit, demented and violent as it had been, exhibited and exploited and abashed and abused until he just stands there and submits.

Christine breathes narrowly, struggling to contain too much contradictory emotion spiralling up inside her chest.

“Oh no, my dear,” says Mme Dedalus. “He came to us. He was already as you saw. We did nothing, nothing to him that he did not protest.”

He was already broken.

Oh angel.

Mme Dedalus leans forward, eyes intent. “You think he’s to be pitied, don’t you? Let me tell you, sweet girl, whatever you may think, you still have a lot to learn. What these walls could teach you about men and women and how their minds twist,” she shakes her head slowly, unsmiling, “you couldn’t find anywhere else. That man, he’s entirely free to leave any time he wants.”

Christine finds she cannot breathe.

“He chooses. Every day in every way, he chooses to stay. You understand?”

__________________

 

When Christine was very young, barely out of leading strings, now tied with the chords of her father’s violin, he taught her the first of the best and truest things.

“When you make a decision, little Lotte, when you choose, you must stick with it.” 

Always and forever.

And so she greets Raoul with a chaste embrace, breathing in the travel dusty strangely exciting smell of him. And she feels it when his hand lingers on her waist.

“It’s good to see you again,” he says, then colours a little with embarrassment. Christine smiles, unable to resist some teasing. “It’s only been a month or so.”

“Yes. Well.” He searches her face, his brow crinkling slightly. Her heart trips, can he tell? Impossible. Still she laughs soft, taking his arm, and tells him with sincerity “I know. It was a very long month or so.”

Raoul watches her with that same hint of puzzlement through supper. It’s unnerving and maybe her merriment is slightly forced as a result. Her stomach twists with apprehension, mind flitting back and forth, between the flickering dimness of her empty bed and the lush brocade of a green and purple corridor. They get through the meal on conversation of England and English oddities.

Perhaps she should wait a while, a few nights to let him settle back into home life. But her blood runs impatient. What’s the point of waiting? When they could try now, when she could fix it all now, why delay the life that is theirs by sanctified right?

So Christine leaves her room when the sounds of the household have quieted. Wrapped against the chill, her hair loose and curling, she steals through and tries her husband’s door. It opens on an empty room and for one awful moment, Christine thinks she’s finally lost Raoul’s fidelity.

But no, there’s a strip of light below stairs around the library door. And there’s Raoul, cleansed of travel grime, a book open on his lap but staring moodily out the cloudy window. The creaking door draws his abstracted gaze and he straightens, surprised at the sight of her.

“Christine.”

He’s about to ask what’s wrong. “Nothing’s the matter,” she says, shutting the door. “I just wanted to see you.” His face softens at that, his hand reaching out to meet hers. Christine smiles, bends to embrace her husband and likes very much that he doesn’t protest when she curls herself on his thighs, nestling against his chest.

They used to sit like this back in the early days of their engagement, those six glorious months of young flowering love. So chaste. “Do you remember?” she asks and he breathes “Of course” with his hand lifting to her hair, tracing the curls.

Christine turns into his touch, lets her lips brush the skin at the base of his thumb. Her heart thumps hard in her chest. This, can this be done? Can she follow through? He watches her, guileless, watches as she leans in and touches her mouth to his. And now this close, Christine feels the tremoring stillness all through him. She breathes in the breath of him, curling her arms around his neck, gathering all the power of what she’s seen in her mind, and deepens the kiss. Long, deep and drugging, the way not-Christine and not-Raoul had kissed in that mirrored room. He lets her do this for a while, passive and perhaps a little startled at her boldness.

Then she moves across his thighs, somewhat amazed by herself, and presses against him with breasts and hips and mouth in no uncertain terms. Raoul gasps, hands seizing in the thick velvet of her robe. His mouth pushes back at hers and Christine finds herself wanting to smile between them. Yes, this can be done. Husband lover, now to be guided into the guardianship of them.

Raoul murmurs her name as their mouths part. “Hush,” she whispers, still breathing his air, and she draws her hands down the rumpled fabric of his shirt, feeling the warmth and play of muscle beneath. She kisses him again, once twice and more as he responds, takes the slick touch of her tongue, his breath quickening hot and excited into her. This delicious mingling of imagination and sensation, what was and no longer could be but is. Then he freezes, breathless and shocked.

“Shhh,” murmurs Christine, slipping from his lap down to the floor, pushing his knees gently apart. Raoul stares at her, disbelieving, as she palms his cock once more through the material of his trousers. She blushes a little, manages a small laugh. “I think you may have to help me. I’m not very familiar with taking these off.”

That’s a lie, she’s worn plenty of breeches in her old life. But here and now, he doesn’t need to wonder how she knows her way into a man’s pants. Eyes bright, Raoul fumbles, hands shaking a little as Christine sheds her robe to reveal her most prudish white nightgown. He gasps her name, a beautiful pathetic sound, and Christine takes her husband’s cock in hand.

So very different. Here in this amber library, the feel of him is warm and thick and so very living against her palm. The colour of him darkening faster, his breath catches as she runs her nail up against the contour of him. And he smells so very different down here, sharp and male, tastes alien beautiful odd as she takes his cock into her mouth, just as she had seen and wondered.

Raoul isn’t silent this time. From that first gasp of contact, high and shocked, to deep ragged breaths and this series of jagged moans. When she tries to swallow him completely down, Christine chokes, tears to her eyes, but perseveres despite the slight sense of absurdity, despite uncertainty. She likes the image they make, her in her voluminous nightgown kneeling on the rich worn carpet, and Raoul sitting on the edge of his father’s chair, his hands clutching at her shoulders, at her face, her hair, with the old gold lamplight falling across them.

He teaches her a certain rhythm, using both her hands and her mouth. It’s awkward and uncomfortable, she can’t quite learn it and it frustrates her more and more. But oh something about the feel and weight and taste of him incites a certain warmth in the pit of her abdomen, a clenching sensation that curls and uncurls with every helpless sound he makes, every slide of his bloodhard flesh against the bloodhot flesh of her tongue and hollow of cheek, something right keeps her there, trying. Raoul fastens his hands in her hair and Christine moans around his cock with the need to press her hand up between her own thighs, the hot sweet scent of her mingling with the hot dark smell of him.

Raoul chokes out her name, a new urgency in the tug of his hands. She fights it but he pulls off, holds her firmly away and Christine sits back on her heels, unfulfilled and unamused. 

This wasn’t what she wanted.

And yet, and yet. This spectacle, she the audience. She tilts her head and watches her husband’s body tighten, spasm and shudder, back arching off the old leather, his bare cock spurting white across his belly, white spatters across his trousers, white spots wetting dark on his untucked shirt. The Vicomte de Chagny, debauched by his own demure child bride.

That’s some satisfaction. As he lies splayed and helpless, she gets to her feet and bends to brush her lips against the curve of his temple. “Good night, Raoul.”

He’s quite unable to speak, disappeared behind his eyes. But this time, as Christine closes the door, she smiles with the knowledge of cock in her songbird mouth, the knowledge that she undoes him and that seems so so right.

They spend the night apart which feels fine to her. Lying in her bed, she watches the bulging moon sail higher in the winter sharp sky, feeling the world subtly changed around her, every shadow hued with possibility.

The joys of the flesh.

That man with the bone pale chest and bright blue eyes, at once her naked familiar and transformed stranger. He had sung that phrase to her once and now her skin ripples with disbelieving understanding. Had he meant? Really meant that ludicrous thing, what now she understands in lurid clarity? 

Impossible.

He even as he had tantalised her so long ago with ecstatic music, as he wrote of the consummate seducer and sang to her of raging passion and the union of too much solid flesh. He even as she’d kissed him in another lifetime, kissed him full and hard in the clear horrified sight of her childhood sweetheart fiancé. He even as his skewed mouth had opened in startled warm wonder against hers. He a virgin?

No. 

Ha. No.

Certainly not now.

And yet she wonders. Was it the same for him? Is it for men as it was for her, strange and shocking and appalling and slightly repulsive? Was it the same for him, something to be learnt and appreciated? Something evolving.

Who was it for him? Some scrap of an urchin girl in the back of some dirty tent or some older woman taking advantage of a young orphaned monstrosity. Perhaps even Mme Giry in her young fair days, down in the catacombs with the glitter of water on glass. Christine stares hard at the play of white light and dark shadow across the ceiling.

Or perhaps the lady with the purple dark eyes teaching and shaping.

Christine blinks, considers for a while and turns on her side to watch the stars glitter in the violet dark sky.

No longer denied.

He wants to be there. She wants to be here. He has given away any semblance of power he ever had. She wants all the power she can have.

Christine smiles a tiny smile, a secret between her cheek and the white pillow and the bone moon.

Maybe all things are possible.

__________________

 

She tells the madam she wants to see him with her double in the mirrored bedchamber. Says this calmly with her hands folded in her lap, clear eyed and direct.

“No.”

Christine blinks. “What?”

Mme Dedalus winces, her tone apologetic. “I didn’t have a chance to tell you. It’s true he doesn’t protest most things but there are always two conditions to every appearance. He doesn’t perform with Lettie. And he will never step into the mirrored rooms. There must never be any mirrors. I’m sorry but those are his terms and we choose to stand by them. Now, if there’s anything else — ”

“All right,” Christine says slowly, rearranging the images in her head. “Very well, I understand. In that case …”

It isn’t adultery, couldn’t possibly be if it isn’t her body uniting with another. She had merely wanted to watch, wanted to see another life played out. A spectacle, no more.

And now?

Now is no different from watching the lone woman explore herself. There’s no reason to feel guilt, no betrayal here. Her wedding ring a dull gleam on her finger, Christine ascends the stairs and pushes open the door to a different chamber.

Dead roses, decaying and drooping, scent the small room all in white. Windowless, lit by one modest chandelier casting a crystalline light off each white surface strewn with discoloured petals of too many shades. On a blood red divan, low and broad, sits the man who had been her delight and then her horror. Silent, head bowed, blindfolded, and perfectly unclothed.

No mirror. No division of black space. In this tiny coffin of a room, he knows exactly when she enters. Doesn’t raise his head but she sees the subtle change in his posture, the almost imperceptible shift into poised alertness. He can’t see anything, those eyes bound and blinded, so he listens, listens with that finely tuned so sensitised hearing.

How things change yet remain the same.

For a bitter moment, she wishes she was anyone but Christine Daae. But then isn’t that the very purpose of this place, this play? She need not be Christine here. And he, he’s been a whole other person for a while now.

Yet she almost asks, almost forgets the rules and nearly opens her mouth to ask why, how, what happened. But he turns his face slightly, baring the distorted flesh and she feels that old ripple of shock at the ravages of what would have been a noble face.

Silent, she approaches, sees him breathe in, seeking the scent of her. But the air is dense with decay, she’s well cloaked from sight and smell. Emboldened, she stands before him and as he lifts his blind face up to her, she touches her hand to that twisted half.

He goes quite still, something like resignation hardening the slim mouth. It’s awful and heartbreaking to see and yet her hand shapes to the malformed contours, fascinated by the nudity of living warm bone, the gnarl of sinew, the knots and weals of scar tissue. Her fingers skim along the band of black, follow the strong swoop of sandy brow on the smooth side, trace the exposed curve of skull, how the fine skin of his scalp melds into the bone. This is why his hair had been shaved off, nothing to hide behind, all deformities exposed to the clear light.

Delicate, she draws her fingers down the centre of his forehead, likes how he knows to tip his face up. She traces the line of his nose and tremors at the touch of cool firm lips, that fine warped mouth closed and still.

Has it really been a whole year away?

Christine crowds him without thinking, her knee on the divan, skirts draped across his thighs. He catches his breath but doesn’t try to touch her, merely leans back to allow her hands cradling his face. Does he sense her mouth an inch from his? Does he expect her hair to fall around them? But no, she’s thought of that already, pinned it securely up, no loose curls to betray her identity. And now she regrets the roses, that she can’t smell the whiteness of his flesh. The words well up in her throat, yearning to struggle free and tell and tell and ask and beg and plead and scream.

And sing.

He stiffens and only then does she realise her nails have dug into the divorced flesh of his cheekbones. They leave tiny half circles of pressured dark pink on that face. She skates the side of her index finger along the subtle curve of his lower lip, part apology part wonder.

Doesn’t he care at all who she is, who plays and pays tonight?

No. Of course not. 

Remember why you’re here, Christine.

Had she even intended to touch?

Her breath catching, she pulls slowly away, sees how he straightens, careful and listening. The skirt of her old gown brushes against his bare legs, how strange and oddly exciting it is to be standing fully clothed while he sits there fully naked and waiting.

Hers for the space of an hour.

And really all she wants is to touch, to explore, to know this male body. Wordless, Christine makes him lean back on his arms. He doesn’t need to be told to spread his knees, that telltale whorish sign.

But she won’t use him like the others. She only learns. With fingertips and hands and breath, she learns the shapes and contours, the fine grain and slide, the smooth and slick and rough and bone of him. He doesn’t protest and if he was surprised there is no sign. He moves for her, lies down, tips back his chin, tenses and relaxes under her touch, turns on his side, long and graceful, to allow her access.

She looks at the sleek swoop of his bare back with the fine relief of spine pushing against thin pale skin. And her lips follow. His skin shivers under her mouth, tastes clean and subtly rich, living bloodwarm pale flesh that fills her senses with an intangible difference of maleness.

There’s a scattering of freckles low on his back, marks of vulnerability, inexplicably reminding her that once this long lean self-contained man was a small frightened boy. Christine mouths those tiny reminders, her tongue flicking out, and remembers oh the living sadness in blue eyes.

On the divan, she straightens up beside his prone body, absently trailing her fingers along the back of his thigh that angles open for her. The small boy matured to a used and abused man, a man who had once ruled and created beauty in terror now giving himself away. Between his thighs is the shadow and curve of his sexual parts and Christine eases him onto his back, wanting to see.

Half hard, unashamed, he holds his blindfold in place when it threatens to slip. If he’d expected her to reach out, take him in hand, he might be surprised.

Christine skims her fingertips from the top of his scalp down the line of his nose, over the dip of his mouth, follows that invisible central line of his body all the way down in a sort of silent benediction, and touches her mouth to the hard yet vulnerable spot just below his navel. The flesh there flinches inward but she is already rising in a whisper of skirts.

No word, no touch. Christine casts a handful of crushed petals across the whiteness of his torso draped across the blood red divan, and leaves, oddly deeply satisfied.

__________________

 

She floats home, euphoric on the memory of skin in the grain of her fingerprints, giddy with the gorgeosity of male flesh laid out just for her.

Dreamy, Christine wanders down to dinner and smiles absently across the table “Seems you’ve had a more pleasing day than I,” her husband says and pulls a mock pitying face.

It’s like cold water trickling unpleasant and sharp down her spine, her vision clearing on the amiable sight of Raoul with that sparkle in his eye just for her.

No, it wasn’t adultery. It wasn’t. But she had forgotten herself, forgotten why she went. Christine strangles the hysteria of any more thought and smiles tightly, her mouth thin with resolve. Over dinner, he tells her about the trials and tribulations of his day and she tells a banal lie about visiting old friends. It’s a black mark on her soul, she feels it, the first time she’s ever lied outright to the love of her life. It only makes her determination stronger.

Don’t forget where your loyalties lie.

She takes a few days to carefully construct the scenario. At a society luncheon, she sits demure between a duchesse and a twittering lady of the nouveau riche, barely hearing the conversation that runs free around her. They scheme and slander and she fits a plan together behind dark eyes. They ask her insidious questions and she answers mechanically, remembers enough of her role to fob them off with hints and secretive smiles. The duchesse pats her hand, approving of this decorum.

All these painted faces on parade and she’s just one more scheming wife with a secret or two.

So be it.

__________________

 

A mask.

Sleek, hard and moulded like bone. Rich dark blue, scaled with detail of feather, it fits over her head, conceals her pinned up hair, slants in almond shaped holes for her eyes, and leaves the lower half of her face bare.

“I want him to teach me,” she says with the sense of a twisted déjà vu, “just him, just me, teach me how to,” and here she falters a little, still able to blush, “how to use my mouth on a man.”

How to undo him.

Through the mask, she watches as she’s transformed into a slightly sinister creature, white skin gleaming against deep blue. Her old dress draped over a chair, she smoothes her hands over this new soft gown. It’s almost monastic in its simplicity, covers her from neck to wrist, high necked and fitted, falls in long fluting folds to the floor. Perfectly opaque.

She’s nude beneath but only she knows it.

This time there is no chaos of petals and falling flowers. In the small white room clearly lit is only the vivid stark red of the divan and the silent black and blue of them. He’s clothed this time, the same shirt and trousers, his long feet bare on the thin red and black carpet. The blindfold is secure across his face, he doesn’t react at all when she appears. Merely sits there, knees spread, leaning back, cool and silent as she approaches.

But he smells her the moment she stands before him, those elegant nostrils flaring a little at the scent of her flesh drenched and rubbed thoroughly with rose cream. It rises off her skin, through the thin fabric of the gown, clogs the air with so much deceptive sensuality.

Expressionless, he holds his hand out and she takes it without hesitation. Christine’s small breakable fingers in that cool long dexterous hand, she flashes back to the moment of shimmering water and glistening metal.

He merely eases her forward til she stands between his spread legs and his fingers leave the thin skin of her inner wrist. Christine looks into the blind smooth curves of that strange and schizoid face, unable to not touch. He lets her, that hint of cold resignation about him again.

Pitiful creature of wonder.

Without question or fear, barely knowing why, she bends her face to his and slides her smooth cheek against his distorted one, a gesture of mute almost animalistic tenderness. It feels like a tiny betrayal but it’s also right, so right when he leans into her, the instinctive response of a mute almost animalistic waif. They share a breath, rose petal delicate.

But somehow it reminds them both of the barriers between. He twitches the blindfold into place. Christine draws back, abruptly aware of the mask shaping her face into something else entirely. Not the Vicomtesse de Chagny, not Christine Daae. What is she now but some strange clipped bird?

Silent, he guides her hand to the open collar of his shirt. Her fingertips remember skin, cling to the luscious grain, and drag slow over the contour of bare collarbone. This time though, she remembers to keep her attention on his face.

He’s been instructed. He will obey. And with the stone in his throat, it has to be all reaction, only the expression of face and breath and body to guide and teach her.

Perhaps she should feel humbled, inferior and awkward. The gawkish girl educated by an older man. Again. But no, somehow here and now like this, Christine grows heady with fascination, euphoric once more with the freedom to do and undo.

She slides open the buttons on his shirt and slides her fingers in like she had seen, likes the slight tremor of reaction when her nail finds nipple. Their breath warm in the space between, he bares one half of his chest and she doesn’t need her hand to be guided there, doesn’t need but oh yes likes very much the hand that cradles the back of her masked head.

He tastes warm, dry and with just the slightest hint of perfumed oil. Bathed and cleansed just for her, rubbed over with creams and oils, by whose hands? His fingers skim the corner of her mouth as she tugs and tongues the stiff tightening skin. She melts a little when he slips the tips of his fingers into her mouth, finds the catch of her teeth.

It’s not a rebuke, it’s a suggestion. He leans a fraction into her and Christine bares her teeth with something like delight. Seizing, biting, gripping the flesh of him with a whole new intensity. And it’s a definite savage satisfaction to hear the involuntary moan half bitten off, a wonderful raw sound from the back of his throat.

Her skin streaking with heat, Christine surges upward, slings her leg boldly over to straddle his thighs. He’ll stop her if she goes wrong but he doesn’t, lets her swarm all over him, brushes of breast and stomach and inner thigh with her soft gown caught and sliding between them. Christine drags the thin shirt halfway down the strong white arms, enough so he’s held and confined, enough so she can run her fingers along that light trail of hair darkening downwards.

When she palms his cock through the trousers, he pulls in a sharp breath, arches into her hand and grabs her wrist. It’s so familiar, that grip a little too tight for comfort, and she smiles wildly at his blind face, forgetting herself and giddy with it.

But he’s only stopped her to show her. With precious few inches of air between them, he helps her undo his trousers and guides her hand in. Wraps her fingers around the living warm shock of his cock, and Christine’s not sure if she blushes with mortification or sheer arousal.

Not her husband, not ever. But him but him. Her nameless ghost, guide and guardian, her erstwhile saviour from solitude. Who preceded whom, childhood sweetheart or romantic myth made flesh, oh god such rich hot living flesh? He knows her mouth is a mere breath from his, she knows she mustn’t, that would be the worst and most final of betrayals. So she sighs softly against the ravaged curve of his cheekbone and slides her fist along the sleek lovely curve of his cock.

Is he erect just for her, have they taught him that well? Or is it merely such indulgence after years of enforced celibacy? Here and now, with all she’s seen and heard as a woman not a girl, Christine thinks she may understand.

The body yearns.

Christine pulls her skirt higher on bare legs, all the better to squirm closer to the irresistible heat and hard maleness of him, and he steadies her with one hand on her hip. 

He teaches her a different rhythm, longer harder decisive strokes with an upward twist that looks so deliciously brutal. And when on a hunch she lets her nails rasp, his mouth parts, bares teeth on a ragged rough breath. The sight of that mouth, the glint of teeth reminds Christine. She goes down, a swift lick of that lovely spot beneath his navel, and the swallow of his cock is all kinds of gorgeous delirious wrongbadbeautiful.

He groans, a definite despairing delighted sound from his chest. One hand locks on the back of her neck, she will not break free unless he lets her. And this only makes Christine push ever closer into the spread of his tensed thighs, inadvertently beginning a rhythm that feels so so right. He thrusts into her mouth, she sucks back onto his cock, inescapable taste and thickness and so much hot wetness. Christine feel it through her whole body, the ceaseless rhythmical thump of cockhead through lips that echoes the rhythm of her round ripe heart, how it sets her hips moving in a rhythm so primal embarrassing but oh god so so necessary.

This spectacle is for no audience but their imagination. The white coffin of a room, under a small still chandelier, Christine masked like a sleek sinister bird of prey, her deep blue gown pooling around her knees on the thin carpet, as she feeds and feeds and feeds on this blinded bared man who had once mastered her so completely. Now he holds her in place but thrusts into her mouth, savaging himself on her teeth and tongue and sucking throat, and Christine’s belly curls and curls tighter lower hotter, slickness coating the inside of her thighs. And this time she has to, just has to touch herself, scrabbles past her skirts to push the heel of her hand against that sinfully deliciously wet clenching place. The smell of her rises like an assault, unmistakable molten sweet, and he lurches forward, bends over her with both hands holding her now. He must smell her, couldn’t possibly not. But before she can even formulate a reaction, he clutches her throat hard.

Christine panics, eyes flying open and up.

It’s a warning and she watches it happen, fascinated. Feels it, tastes it, takes it when he comes. He arches, all bone pale slick sweat scarred beauty, the blindfold so stark black against the tide of heat sweeping the schizoid cheekbones, his face cut deep by those twin grooves framing that sharp mouth splitting on an exquisite snarl. He comes in spurts and spasms down her throat, thick and bitter and strange, spilling out of her songbird mouth, the smell thick and rich and slightly sweet. 

Christine chokes, splutters a little as she pulls off but he doesn’t let her go, merely loosens his hold as he slumps forward, his breathing deep and ragged. On her knees, she looks up into his slightly vulnerable face, looks at the strip of blinding black and wonders about those blue blue eyes. Would he be there?

She still pulses, that aching unfulfilled twist between her thighs, but perhaps that can’t be helped. Not here, not now.

She had wanted guidance, knowledge and now has it. Be sated. Christine stands, moves towards the door on silent if somewhat shaky feet. Another man’s cock in her married mouth, the taste of his most intimate stuff still on her tongue, swallowed down into her secretive throat.

“Madame Rose Morte.”

Christine freezes, hand on the door, too shocked to even look. But there is no imagining that voice. After a year of disuse, of stubborn or traumatised silence, he still sounds sweet, ever dulcet and elegant, a musician actor’s voice.

Dear lord and master, she had forgotten how the mere sound of him would stroke her very soul with beauty.

And now she has to look, yearning for those early early days of delirium and delight when the world was vivid with the colours of her own soul unfurling.

He sits calm on the edge of the divan, shirt and trousers still undone, his cock soft and smeared. Unnervingly, he looks in her direction and says “Next time we’ll see how a woman can be pleasured by a man. Mm?”

__________________

 

They call her the dead rose. 

Which, though it makes perfect sense, alarms her greatly. It’s too much like her old life, the cryptic ever so romantic titles and nicknames of the operatic stage, too much like something he would say.

Did say.

Christine goes home and shuts herself away for a few days, too disturbed to face anyone. Especially Raoul. He asks about her, the maid relays his concern, and Christine adds a few grey smudges to her soul. A headache, stomach trouble, that so ironic monthly complaint.

What she does is lie long hours huddled under the covers, staring at nothing as her mind races, unpicking at this life, battling back and forth between her guilt and her need, her love and her desire. Is it trite, is she no better than any other married harlot? Is this really the new world or another dangerous nightmare that will destroy too much for too little?

And underneath it all is a fear that prowls around her bedchamber, no longer confined to moon shadow but lounging in the harsh light of day, mocking all her frantic rationalisation.

Simply afraid, Christine.

Terrified that she’ll be discovered beyond the blindfold and the mask. Terrified that what will be discovered will not be the good wife who only means well nor even the decent woman erring in love. Terrified that she’s so far gone and going ever further into the vivid darkest parts that are all herself, that she’s changing and changing until she’ll no longer recognise the face in her mind’s eye.

Yet a spark of rebellion smoulders through all this turmoil. That he blithely assumes he can teach her to master her own flesh like he had shaped her voice. It’s not his place, maybe it’s not even for Raoul. He will put his hands on her, into her and draw out her secrets, smirking.

She won’t have it.

“My body is my own, these are my terms,” she tells Mme Dedalus and of course money makes it all possible.

He will not touch her. No hands, no mouth, no brush of skin. He won’t move unless it’s at her hands, completely subject to her. And she will find release. It’s a challenge, of course. Will he have changed so much that his pride, that wild ego untrammelled by social nicety, will be able to resist? He may not even care that much.

But the man had broken a year long self-imposed exile of silence to address her. Christine’s no longer romantic enough to suppose she has that much charm. Not in silence, unseen. No, he had spoken for himself, that nonchalant arrogance of naming and assuming power over her.

Not again. 

She’s a child no longer. He is no longer a mystery. She’s seen behind the mask, her innocence breached.

So Christine lets her hair cascade around her shoulders in long loose dark curls, and steps into a sleek charcoal grey gown, monastic once more. Her face utterly bare, she ascends the stairs once more.

It’s a different white room, large lustrous and welcoming, windowed on a deepening night sky. Dominated by the four poster bed of dark heavy wood, furled in rich red brocade, made up in crimson with so many decadent cushions and pillows, it’s a tabernacle of sin surrounded with so much purity. And there he is, nude and lying back, waiting. Blinded and bound, those long hands trussed to rails carved into the dark headboard.

He seems perfectly unconcerned.

Christine’s irritated enough to let the door slam heavy behind her. That spark of temper only brightens at the amused face he turns in her direction.

“Madame.”

She almost snaps back, that he isn’t meant to talk, damn his conniving eyes. But she catches herself, very nearly amused.

He would play a new game.

“A fascinating proposition,” he remarks, that smooth lilting voice shivering her skin. Christine finds herself prowling closer, her eyes fixed on the long lovely gleam of him. No, this may not be difficult.

“Of course it begs the question.”

She will not listen, if it’s at all possible to block out the words while oh that voice slides over her like sinuous beauty. Sitting on the side of the bed, Christine looks her fill, lets her breath steady and mind clear.

“Will Madame chase this dragon forever?” he asks silkily. 

Her eyes snap to his face. 

He mocks her, lying there bought and paid for, he actually dares.

Furious, Christine slaps her hand across his mouth. But then his warped lips curved against her touch and she stares, distracted and mesmerised, at that long subtle groove changing the coolness of his face. Mercurial creature of light.

Damning herself, she moves her fingers upon the mocking mouth. And leans in on a breath, finds that indent with the tip of her tongue, and licks, tracing this human betraying quirk of expression so fine and delicious. He says nothing, merely breathes soft into the hollow of her neck and shoulder, the curls of her hair trailing across his face. He breathes like he’s seeking, sucking in the rich rose scent of her.

Christine devours him inch by inch, seeking the thin warm skin under his jaw, bared to the light as she licks along the sleek curve of his jaw, seeing his throat work in response. “Madame is a sensualist,” he murmurs so close to her ear. His voice is no longer quite so smooth, just that little ragged. Because of her?

Madame is a lot of things, she tells him silently, and drags her tongue boldly down the corded side of his throat. That lovely demonic throat that came so close to cut open, spilling lifeblood and soulvoice. Because of her. And yet she wouldn’t change a thing. Here and now in the breathing warm silence, she can admit that without any words.

“In the East,” he says, “there are women who are taught this. Not,” he falters with the rasp of her teeth along a vein, “not just to, to fuck a man, not merely to lie back and take what their husbands and kings thrust out.”

Christine moves to straddle him, intoxicated on the sound and skin of him. He moves with her, offers the bare muscle and sinew of his chest with a small swerve. She runs her hungry hands up and across, relearning rejoicing.

“They’re taught to know their own bodies, all the secret pleasures and pains and glories. Taught how to live in their skin, inhabit their flesh, make love to themselves. The education of queens and lovers. Everything — ”

He catches his breath, arching with the cut of her nails, a touch of colour stealing across his cheekbones. “Everything, in effect, Madame, that you seem to want so much.”

Ah but she’s not the only one. He likes her hands on him too, so very much. Christine sees it well, smirking slightly at how her hands skimming along his abdomen draw tremors, the soft hiss between teeth when she circles his nipple with nails, that beautiful inward flinch when she touches the sensitive pulse just below his navel. Was he taught too to develop his sensuality? By whom?

“Not,” he continues somewhat huskily, “that I could blame you.” Her lashes brush over his rib as she licks slow up across his chest and listens. “We need touch, every creature.” And here he gives a soft chilling little laugh. “Even the less human of us, the not human.”

Thoughtful, Christine tastes the inner curve of his upper arm raised and tensed out to the side. She memorises the strange sweetness of such babyfine skin. Does he still think so little of himself, even here where he’s worshipped with bodies and monies, an exotic terrible demigod of sorts?

Idol and human, there are fine blond hairs that gild the outer curve of his forearm, lead her along the long delineated contour of muscle to where she sucks on the warm pulse inside his bound wrist. 

But of course he does. Bought and paid for by voyeurs and deviants whose adoration is born entirely out of horror and macabre fascination. 

Every creature, human or other, needs to be touched and he’s no different. Blood beats against the thinnest of skin and Christine bites down in a moment of pure viciousness. He snarls at her, tries to tug away but she holds fast with teeth and hand, and follows only to transfer her mouth along to the secret coil of bone behind ear. This time his voice is low and just as vicious. “Madame is a sadist too.”

Yes, and she doesn’t stop. Deviates to the unutterable contour where shoulder slides into chest, the strong tender perfection of skin over sinew over bone. Christine is careful not to let any of her touch any of him, just her fingers resting over rib and the slow sucking of her mouth along sternum. Tiny fair hairs scatter across his breathing chest, the pale skin blushing hot in the wake of her lips. She bites into a small stiff nipple and hears as much as feels the choked moan.

So unlike a woman, this perverse suckling, her nails raking across the taut shiver of his abdomen. She’s never liked Raoul tugging at her nipples, felt nothing more than irritation. But this, this, the way he responds so hard gives her cause for grim wonder. Are some people just luckier, sluttier than others?

Christine slides all the way down, her body held shy of his, but still he seems to follow her, the unconscious undulation of spine as his blind face drops forward as if he could watch her. Her body thrumming soft and low, Christine lies between his spread legs, knees drawn up under her, arms lying against his torso. Her nails rest on his chewed nipples, her mouth hovers at the join of his thigh and hip, and before her eyes rises his cock rude and glistening tender. She could, her lips remember, the flesh of her mouth wet on the sense memory.

But no.

“You use me,” he tells her soft, “as you want to be used, wanting to know and be known. It’s very clear, you know. M’sieur doesn’t touch you like this. You’ll have to teach him, guide him, lead him out of the solitude of his flesh.”

They both breathe for a moment, caught in a memory. His voice is soft and sad when he speaks again. “We are trapped in our bodies, each one of us. And you know, don’t you, that this what you do is the noblest and most pitiable thing of all?”

Christine closes her eyes against the long solid line of his thigh. Oh yes. Trying to get ever closer, into the core of him and her.

His voice is barely audible. “Trying to love and be loved.” 

And now she looks up, past the pale strong rough and gleam of him, to that face bound in black, drawn and defiled with all the grief of the corporeal forlorn world. Is there nothing more heartwrenching and seductive than loneliness? 

Her eyes welling up, Christine turns her face and presses her lips to the flesh of his thigh. It’s a chaste heartfelt gesture but he tenses abruptly and wrenches away. He won’t be pitied. “Come now, Madame. Where are all the lessons you’ve learnt?”

Vile mocking … man!

Just for that, she swipes her tongue along the crease where thigh joins hip. He bites off his words with a hiss of breath, the muscle twitches violently, and she drags her nails down along the outer line. Her hair brushes the side of his cock as she licks maddeningly along that crease, once twice again. Noses around the tickle of secret hair, so careful to avoid his flesh reddening harder, untouched. The smell of him is so very different to Raoul, richer softer, a natural dense aroma with a hint of scented oils.

Those Eastern women, did they teach him this? So many dusky bodies entwining with this ivory flesh. The images burn behind her eyes. Christine breathes carefully at the base of cockflesh and smiles at the involuntary quiver. Eastern women there may have been but here and now, he responds to her. And she, with her own flesh tightening, heating in the confines of fine grey gown, sets her mouth to the curious curves of his sexual parts.

Slick, strangely tender and so so very vulnerable. Christine hunches her shoulders, fascinated, deepening her wet mouth. There’s a groan above her and she knows without looking that he’s tossed his head back, that strong throat and torso arching glistening in the clear light. Oh yes, what he’d want right now is his hand in her hair.

Ha.

Thoroughly enjoying herself, Christine sucks him into the sear of her mouth, enthralled by the sleek thinness of skin, the warmth of him living burning here. As she uses her hand to lift him deeper, her fingers slip, swerve along that most intimate crease of him. He flinches, she freezes, all mortified horror, his flesh slipping from her mouth.

And it’s some kind of appalled shock to see him lick his lips and ever so gently tilt further into her touch. “Come now, Madame,” he says softly, without any mockery. Christine stares, unmoving, for several mind racing seconds. 

Not just women, then.

He must sense what she thinks because his mouth quirks. “Yours isn’t the only body to have secrets, you know,” he says dryly.

Men and their pleasures. As if it isn’t enough to have that bizarre beautiful thing popping up at any inopportune moment. Her amusement fading, Christine considers for a few more moments, eyes thoughtful on the gleam along his averted smooth cheekbone, that fine mouth still and careful. The utter perversity of what he asks, the unequivocal sin. This would give pleasure, this?

This she has to see.

And, remember, she can end it all at any moment. “Go on,” he says on a breath. Again not the slightest hint of arrogance. It’s the ragged instinctual tone that has Christine blinking with the readiness to steal her fingers back. His pleasure at her fingertips? Ha. Yes, this she has to see. Blanking her mind, she pushes up on one arm to watch how he spreads his legs wider, angling his hips up. 

He looks like a woman, she realises on a ripple of recognition, that bare open expression on his ravaged face. Even with the upward swoop of his glistening cock, the sight of those splayed white thighs inviting invasion is at once unnerving and so very tempting.

“Madame,” he says gently. So Christine strokes her fingers down between his legs, around the curves, deeper and warmer, watches his face with as much anxiety as curiosity while she strokes ever closer. He turns his face against the deep red cushion, breathes slower deeper like he’s relaxing into her touch. It’s strange and captivating, watching and knowing the lewdness of what they do, what she is about to do to him. 

Christine finds the crinkled dip with its hint of heat, and feels her own face blush hot. But his hips push automatically down and she recognises that instinct with an inward start, suddenly aware of the clenching ache between her own thighs.

She must gasp or make some sort of sound that voices her desire. Because he, blinded and sensitive, turns his face to her. “There,” he says roughly, jerking his chin towards the askew cushions. “Under the smallest one.”

It’s a tiny vial of oil wedged between pillow and wood. She knows that scent. Nameless, vaguely exotic and so him now. Her nipples abruptly tight against the fine catch of her gown, Christine wets her fingertips, aware that her blood thrums so close under her unsteady skin.

“All the way,” he adds and she has to look sharply at the blindfold. But no, his face is turned away, a slight sheen of sweat all over him as he lies tense and breathing fast. And yet she feels, knows he listens for every movement she makes, so focused on her and her alone. It’s intimidating but so exhilarating.

Christine slicks her fingers to the base and can’t resist the evil little impulse to skim them over the long curve of his cock. This passion play that never ends. His indignant cry turns into a long gasping sigh, a shuddering lifebreath she wants to take into her as she watches, his whole body arching into the steady liquid invasion of her fingers.

Perhaps she should be more afraid, more unwilling to breach as she was breached, at least more anxious. But somehow knowing what it feels like to be pushed into makes her all the surer and steadier, knowing how to slide right in, following the push and pull of his flesh, witnessing what she and no one else does to him right now.

Virgin no longer, either of them.

And oh lord, is this what it feels like, this searing heat and the living vise tightness, the grip of pulsing warm insides. Christine’s breath shortens, leaning over him, eyes locked on the heat of colour across his face. A whole new power of pleasure in the way he pushes down on her hand, rocks into her palm, the way his chest reddens across, his cock hardening even more, impossibly. With every push down, his arms tauten, pulling against the bonds that rub against his wrists. She wants to see marks there.

Christine watches, understands the rhythm, the fuck. Wonders if this is why men like to be on top of women, to see this blind abandoned need because of what she does to him. He twists on her fingers, tells her “another” and she gets up to three before his cock begins to leak clear fluid and sweat collects in the curl of his collarbone, his wrists chafing red. He twists again and again, an unbelievably exciting sight that has her own skin shivering with heat, that clenching ache wetting deeper between her bare thighs.

Without thinking, Christine whips back her skirt, and it’s all kinds of lewdness to touch herself while finger fucking him. The secret curls of her are damp through and oh god the flesh of her grips her fingers just as hard.

Cunt.

Cunt is the word. If she can say his, she can say her own. She slides her finger along that unbearably sensitive hooded spot, moans a little and of course he hears her, knows immediately what she does. A strangled sound in his throat, he yanks at the ties but they hold fast and only serve to fuck himself deeper on her hand. Delighted, Christine slides her thumb along the base of his pearling cock, finds her mouth hungry. Could she?

Mouth on his cock, fingers in his flesh, hand between her own thighs. She could. Cupping her own pulsing cunt, curling her fingers deep, Christine watches and calculates. Perhaps she’s a little too soon, perhaps she’s right on cue because when his body tightens, seems to pull in on itself, that’s when she twists her wrist short sharp, and pulls out her fingers.

He doesn’t howl exactly but it’s close, the roar that rips from his throat beautifully timbred with unamused unfulfilled frustration. Christine grins, her whole body warm. Madame is indeed a sadist but then Madame paid for a specific purpose and she’s not so far gone to forget herself in his pleasure. As he struggles to regain composure, trembling and cock angry, she leans to feather her lips across his smooth cheekbone. Say something, go on. Mock again.

Ever the showman, he knows his cue. Richly bitter, he says “Madame is an unmitigated bitch too, eh?”

Bravissimo.

Her mouth curled, Christine sweeps the skirt of her gown out of the way, goes to straddle him and for a moment sees herself quite clear, sees how she could engulf that lovely aching cock with her swollen precious cunt. It’s a shocked moment of realities colliding. 

Her face hot with shame and fury, Christine blinks and focuses on the long lightly haired line of his thigh.

Men and their uses, to be used no differently than a woman.

She tosses her head, curls cascading down her back, as she braces herself with one hand against his shoulder. And rubs carefully along the contour of his thigh, watching for a reaction. It feels instantly delicious. And he, he seems to tighten with resignation as much as sensation, the warped mouth thinning as his cock quivers.

“You use me,” he says, all subtle knives in his tone. You used me, she almost retorts. Still she lowers herself and sighs at the lovely pressure of muscle and bone and skin against the wet ache of her bare cunt. And he submits enough to stretch out and dig his heel into the mattress so his thigh is braced right up against her. It’s crude and animalistic but so wonderful, so fucking right. Christine arches, eyes closing, bites deep into her lower lip, rocks into him and he rocks up against her, his own breath quickening as they find rhythm. The divine push and push rub and rasp of flesh, bizarre and bestial, coloured with so many harmonic aromas of male and rose and oil and female.

Christine grinds down, head back and moaning with the flex of muscle against the swollen molten spasm of her cunt. She rocks like a demented feral child. Every inch of skin seems to burn and tighten, she claws with one hand at the thin fabric clinging too close to flesh filling with fire, desperate for release, desperate for contact. Lurches forward, blind and primeval, her body collides with his and they both cry out but Christine already has her arms against the polished wood of the headboard, gasping with the slide of breast and stomach and thigh through the barest of fabric against his face and chest and abdomen, pushing her throbbing cunt against the delicious jutting point of his hipbone. He snarls, the sound all teeth, pulling against the restraints. “Untie me, untie me now.”

She almost does, has a flash image of untying just one hand and using his fingers to bring herself to completion. But that spark of rebellion blazes in this furnace of sensation. She drags his head back with one hand and looks into the schizoid face with its bound eyes, his skewed mouth vulnerable. With one shift of hips she could take him in and break him apart. But it may well break her apart too. Her and everything she holds dear.

Her arm curled around his neck, breasts against him, Christine breathes in narrowly and lowers herself just so. He goes perfectly still, tense and tremoring. And Christine’s eyes fill with the inexpressible exquisite feel of cocktip nudging against her cunt. Need suddenly rages through her, powerful overwhelming, a primitive impulse to take in and take deep, a roaring physical imperative to fuck and be fucked.

If he had his hands free, she knows without a doubt that one would rest firm on her back, guiding her down. But this is entirely her game, her play. Christine licks her lips, moans a little as she rocks forward just that fraction, his cock sliding just that fraction deeper. He groans, long and low and tortured. “Madame, you would murder a man …”

That shouldn’t be funny but she almost laughs. Oh god. Hurting with want, Christine twists her hips and lets him slip out. It’s a weird sort of relief to not feel him in her. 

Spreading her knees, Christine rucks up her gown and watches his face so close as she begins to finger herself. The smell of her cunt rises thick and vivid in the inches of space between them, as much female animal as rose cream and scented oil and male sweat. And she sees it quite clear when he understands, those fine nostrils flaring slightly and a faint absurd blush touching the tips of his ears. It’s adorable.

Biting down on her smile, Christine watches as he tips his head back, blinded and bound, his chest rising and falling, pale gold hairs glistening as the light slips sleek along contour of rib and abdomen, his cock deep red and painfully stiff against her bare sliding thigh. She wants him to talk but can’t, can’t think how to make this known. So she strokes herself and licks along the curve of his jaw, finds with the tip of her finger that unbearably delicious hooded spot once more, and moans a little with the warp of his twisted flesh against the tip of her tongue, moans with the clench and gnaw of her swelling cunt. Still her fingers inside are nothing like cockflesh and it’s maddening.

Enough for her to change her mind abruptly and reach for the black tie in the headboard. She unties just one hand, his left. It falls sudden and heavy, clearly numb. “Oh thank Christ,” he says fervently, and drags his mouth across the side of her throat, hot and lovely and terribly erotic. Rules have been broken but it’s too late and she doesn’t care, chasing her dragon too high into the sun. Body thrumming like any virtuoso violin, Christine takes up his hand, unconsciously massaging as she breathes and tries to think for a moment. And he tells her quietly “You needn’t fear. Do what you will.”

She doesn’t need permission, is her instant flaring response. Still his words make that tiny crucial difference, make her feel that much easier about the keening want, about guiding his long elegant hand up her thigh. She watches, unblinking, as he inclines his face a bit, his breath quick and shallow, catching when she lets his cool slightly calloused palm glide along the inner curve of skin. 

He crooks his fingers just as they brush the curls of her and just that touch makes her knees weaken, almost loosens her hold on his wrist. But no, Christine remembers herself and holds fast, repeats in her mind that she’s in charge. And it’s scary and delicious and wicked to be astride him on her knees, braced with one arm against the headboard, his schizoid face pressed hot between her neck and shoulder, teeth scraping skin, and her hand locked around his wrist between them with his fingers flexing deep and delirious inside her. One, two, three, fucking her fast as she had fucked him, her vision shorting out with the rub of his thumb across her hood. 

If only he would talk, if only, but he has only gasps, listening too hard to the moans and soft cries of her spinning ever higher into herself, the living golden spiral of incomparable sensation curling tighter and tighter as she rocks faster and faster against his hand, so aware of his cock pushing against the inside curve of her thigh, riding between slipping fabric and tensing flesh, hotter harder wetter. Christine fucks herself into orgasm and it’s a colourburst of breathstealing bonemelting light, every inch of her incinerating and vanishing in an endless moment of oblivion.

When she can think again, it seems her body shimmers, threaded with so much impossible divinity. Her lashes rise against the malformed stripped contours of his face and it takes her far far too long to realise how tense he holds himself, that he’s waited for her and is still waiting. Moving as if she might fall to pieces, Christine takes his hand from where it clasps the inside of her thigh. He breathes in hard, his mouth firm, but doesn’t move, lets her slide his fingers along the full satiated slickness of her cunt. The scent of her overwhelms everything, intoxicating and a little embarrassing but it seems only damned right. And he stops breathing entirely when she wraps both their damp hands around his agonised erect cock.

It doesn’t take long at all, a few slick sure strokes, a few moments of gasped breath and then he’s coming desperately uncontrollably between them, all over her askew grey gown and his pale hard abdomen, blood flooding close under the skin all down his chest, the smell of him rich and hot mingling with the rich sweet smell of her, the sound of him pure and beautiful and soulshaken. 

Christine comes very very close to kissing a man who isn’t her husband. Instead she unties his right hand and slumps upon his spent body, their thighs slick with release, their foreheads together. His hands rest light on her back.

The moment feels nothing pitiable and nothing noble. And she’s not sure if that means anything.

______________

 

_the roses bloomed in the night. christine felt light as a wisp, drifted like happiness in the moonlight. but when she looked up, there was no moon in the clear vast sky. what glowed off her white skin and white chemise of cobwebs were the roses. each large and intricately swirled, petals around petals of mist and tears, glimmered with cold brilliance._

_she moved between the bushes and they caught against her chemise, left trails of stuff wet and shiny as star sap. with each touch, her happiness frayed a little, like thorns that ripped shreds of joy away, fragment after fragment until christine came to a stop, near tears._

_roses spread before her around her as far as she could see, a wide long painful sea of tears. she couldn’t bear the thought of going on. something tugged at the hem of her soiled chemise, brushed her bare leg with the touch of cold dead flesh. she recoiled with a cry but it was a child. a child with dark eyes and dark curling hair like hers, reaching its naked thin arms up._

_hers. she knew without reason, stooping to gather the little boy up. he wore nothing beneath a ripped black blanket, his breakable legs cold against her belly. the fabric moved against her fingers not like wool but more finished, elegant. a flash of red lining and christine understood, clasped the child closer. he nuzzled against the thin bone of her chest, the chill of his flesh warmed ever so slowly._

_she had to walk on. they couldn’t stay there. with every step, the warmth of him made the tear of the roses gentler and gentler, kept the hurt not completely away but enough to bear. christine walked on, her greyed chemise tore to tatters. blood ran down her legs, warm and obscene. the child’s lashes brushed like wings against her collarbone and she walked on, bare feet muddying. roses fell, squelching beneath her tread._

_her heart felt like a shard of ice in her breast, frost formed on her lashes, rime on her lips. the sky was a wide black mirror glittering before her, coming straight down to the silver horizon like a wicked sharp blade. the child began to hum against her throat, the sound seemed to ooze like liquid warmth into her skin, through cartilage and veins to the corded vessel of her stilled voice. it was a song of dolls and goblins and feasts and attics. she recognised it with the dim wonder of too many intervening years and found she could stop walking._

_christine set down the child, knelt to meet his dark solemn gaze. the roses began to change around them, bloodying, reddening the world glow. she looked into his smooth soft face and said “stop it. you must stop. find another song.” her voice caught. “say goodbye.”_

_he didn’t blink, merely searched her face as if he wondered if she meant it. then he put his small hand against her chest, shocked her with the slide of fine fingers around her bare breast, small thumb crossing her suddenly erect nipple. christine flinched, cried out as something was torn through flesh, torn from her breast, clutched between small white fingers._

_expressionless, the little boy opened his hand to show her blood and bits of gristle and in the centre of his palm something large, soiled and nameless. with his other hand, he wiped away the debris of her insides until there lay on his palm a jagged icicle glistening dull white like solidified mist, sharp edged and vicious._

_she looked from the bloody gaping rent in her chest, white bone glinting through, caught on the white shred of her chemise, to the strange sullied knife of ice in the small hand. it was hers. she had to have it._

_but even as she touched it, his hand closed around hers, the fingers lengthening, changing. christine looked up to see her father smile faintly back at her._

_there was a cord around his throat. no, not a cord, a string, a violin string that cut even as she peered closer, cut deeper until thick white drops trickled down to collect in the curl of his collarbone. christine touched her own throat fearfully but the skin was whole and unmarked, felt living warm._

_and in their clasped hands, something changed, moved, grew, throbbed, wetted until she was left in no doubt at all. her father touched his bloody hand to her cheek, the briefest tender caress that brought tears to her eyes, water melting down her thawing face._

_he said nothing._

_christine watched through drying eyes as he walked away, naked, back the way they came. the roses died, melted to an endless clammy black plain that shone faintly in the dark light. there was nothing but black sky and black sand where he went. and christine, with her round ripe heart in hand, in a circle of blood roses with the mirror sky at her back, his old opera cloak pooled at her bare feet, watched til she couldn’t see him any more._

______________

Something wakes her, perhaps a change of light or slight sound, something small and gentle that has her mind clearing slow behind shut eyes. A body breathes calm beside her and for one dreamy moment, Christine wonders when Raoul —

Oh god.

Her eyes slam open. Through the mess of her hair, she sees moon glow dappling the far white wall. The faint acrid smell of a guttering gas lamp stings her mind, and there’s the inescapable memory scent of roses and bodies oh no oh no. She fell asleep, he was untied, she had no mask, he could have, he might have, Raoul!

Her heart seems to throb too hard through her chest. She lies stiff on her belly against the sheets, weighed under the brocade cover tossed across her back. She’s turned away from him, away from the revealing light, her hair sleep smeared across her face, and maybe the shadows conceal her completely still.

She daren’t move.

But for what seems like ages there is only stillness and the unhurried breathing of the man asleep beside her. Christine is so rigid her calf begins to cramp. He sleeps on, perhaps used to sharing a bed with strangers, perhaps not. Her mind darting off in too many directions all at once, Christine realises she has to move at some point, has to leave the bed, the room and soon.

Eventually the cramp proves too painful to control and she twists on a sharp breath, grabbing for the brocade as it slides off. Her heart almost stops when she sees him lying there on his side. The blindfold is gone, his face is pale and peaceful in the light.

Awake.

Watching her.

Christine shrinks under the brocade, tensed for violence. Still in shadow but what do those eyes see? He looks steadily at her half hidden face. Appalled and jittery, she stares back, realising slowly that maybe all he sees is the glitter of her eyes in the dark and perhaps a contour of grey gowned form. “Don’t worry,” he says, that voice dryly compassionate, “every soul deserves its mask. Your secret’s quite safe from me.”

Is it? She searches his face, almost unable to believe. How long had they slept together? Or, more to the point, how long had she slept and he lay beside her, not touching, not looking? 

Impossible.

And yet, he of all people.

Yes, he’d understand. Has this been the attraction she held for him through this play? 

“It wasn’t always like this, you know.” His voice is almost diffident. “I wasn’t always like this.”

Christine frowns, startled and suspicious of this sudden confession in the cloak of night. It reeks of manipulation, too much like old emotional tricks and performances for an invisible audience. Contemptuous, she begins to turn away, ready to slip out from under the covers.

”I only mention it,” he adds with a slight edge, “because I was once like you. Untouched.”  
She almost snaps, automatic defiance to contradict him. She needs no lectures, she’s married, but ah.

Cynical, Christine subsides and turns back. Will he tell now about those Eastern hands tutoring and touching him? All that luscious marble flesh. And damn it, why does she care so much to know?

He moves towards her, his hand reaching across the dark space. She tenses immediately, half averted, the bedcover like some too late maiden shield between them. He sees it, of course. His hand falls, curls on the brocade between them and he turns onto his back, long and lean and nude, all the flesh of him glimmering with interesting shadow against the furled drape of midnight red. Beyond him, the moon floats three quarter and pregnant in the deep sky, and Christine finds her mouth goes dry at the faint glitter of deep blue eyes.

“You think it’s absurd, I suppose, that,” he pauses and says clinically, “a whore would say such a thing.” Christine opens her mouth, wants to protest but her conscience reminds her. “Doesn’t matter, you know. Everyone, every body, must begin somewhere. And this, this body wasn’t touched for years, decades, from young.”

He turns his head away with that familiar slow creep of memory. “You’ve seen my face,” he says, darkly amused, “not even one a mother could love. So imagine it, if you will.” His voice cools. “A childhood knowing no sweetness of touch, no kisses or hugs, no embrace of skin on skin, not even a brief careless caress of affection.”

This time Christine’s protest is an involuntary squirm, discomfited. His mouth curls a little. “You think I’m trying to make you feel sorry for me. I’m not. Pity,” he pauses and breathes soft, “pity is for fools. I simply warn you. With no touch, no heat, the skin grows cold, so very still and hard. Not the blooded urgent hardness of desire, you understand? But the bitter lonely hardness of frozen flesh, the rigor mortis of solitude.”

Now he glances at her, a sudden spark of devilry. “Which is why I do what I do, Madame.” And now he mocks himself. “A curious sort of philanthropy, wouldn’t you say?”

She stifles a laugh into the brocade. He continues without inflection. “She changed me. With mercy. With pity.”

Christine goes perfectly still. Knows only that she must hear this confession in the red box divorced into light and dark by the unknowable moon.

“You feel changed, don’t you, Madame, by the touch of another? Be it your husband or your man whore. You take the touch with you and you remember.”

The body remembers. Water reflections on catacomb walls and streaming shadows around glittering finery, the smell of smoke and sweat and greasepaint, water plastering her skirt to her legs, and oh oh the feel of his warm skewed mouth splitting for her.

“A man will change anything for a woman. Take that back to your husband, your M’sieur Mort. This truism, if you will. Many women may educate the body of a boy into a man in the lewdest and finest ways but he’ll change any and every fibre of his wretched soul for the woman who’ll heal the pitiful thing for him.”

“Even if,” his voice quietens, “even if it’s not in the way he thought she would. Even if she murders with kindness and he discovers some shred of nobility with which he can do nothing. A grand glorious gesture that, that’s meant for the imagined tribute of her humanity. Perhaps this isn’t what was meant, what she might have hoped.”

If she ever thought of it. Christine shuts her eyes for a moment, tightlipped against guilt and recrimination. And now he does sound bitter. “Well, where does one go with this face even if the heart is noble, trying so damned hard to be noble and follow her example, be the man worthy — ”

He breaks off, looks up at the bland faced moon. “Curious sort of philanthropy,” he repeats to himself. “Well,” the voice lilts flippant, “why not? It’s not exactly hard labour. Or is it?”

But this time only he laughs, that eerily sweet sound. Christine feels like she’s sinking into brocade, suffocated by the ghost swirling thick and choking and inescapable around him, the ghost of her. She was right, he had been broken. 

She’d broken him.

Christine moves without thinking, lets the covers fall, reaches in a slide of skin and material and her hair falling across his face. If it was seduction through confession, this is how she succumbs. He’s startled, starts to speak and is stilled by her fingers against his fine lips, her body against his, face against face, warped against smooth.

For the first time in what feels like ages, Christine feels the need to give comfort, a pure platonic wordless embrace in the tears of an incomplete moon. She holds him, closes her eyes against his, her heart breaking for him, for her, the girl she used to be and the girl he had loved to an impossible ideal. She holds him for what he had wanted for them, what they could have had and the impossibility of it all. And he feels it like she does, it shudders through him, through her, the long terrible wracking breath of soulpain.

The noblest and most pitiable thing in the world is to want love.

The barest space between them, Christine puts her hand against the slew and swerve of his face and watches the glimmer of blue black eyes. He asks, soft and liquid, “Would Madame fancy a pity fuck for the freak?”

She goes cold.

“Gratis, perhaps?”

She hits him, it’s the only fit answer. Tearful and rageful for the hurt and hurting ways of him, the heel of her palm slams into his shoulder with an audible thud. 

He catches her wrist and twists, pulls her hard up against him. Cruel and violent, suddenly reminding her of just what he’s capable. Christine’s breath vanishes as she looks into cold dark blue eyes, swallowed in darkness.

“Don’t,” he says precisely, “fuck with your happiness, Morte. Go home.”

_________________

 

He’s right. She knows this, feels it. This, all rebellious defiance aside, is why she trudges home through the slushy gas lit streets, hidden in her shabby cloak, hidden in a swirl of conflict and confusion.

It’s also why Christine doesn’t hear the fall of heavy feet until it’s too late. She only has time to sense someone rushing up the pavement behind her, time to half turn in unthinking bewilderment. A body barges right into her, knocks the breath out of her. There’s a dizzying tilt of slush, streetlamp and stars, and then the jarring impact of bone against flagstone.

Christine lies, stunned and foolish, for the eternity of a moment. Then rough frantic hands snatch at her body. She whimpers, curls up involuntarily, but the man is only after money. He wrenches her purse from the inside of her cloak and is gone in a rush of unwashed desperation.

Well. It had to happen. Grim and shaken, Christine manages to sit up. She should have known better. Too many weeks walking alone in this city, between squalor and splendour. She should have known. The irony is there hadn’t been much money left. Her throat closing and body stiff with shock, she pulls herself to her feet and continues along the abandoned street. Was it an opium habit or a family he needed to feed?

It could have been her. An accident of birth, of marriage, of fortune. Well, it might still be her one day. Nothing lasts forever, hasn’t she learnt that by now? 

Dazed, Christine makes her slow aching way back home. Naturally the footman who opens the door raises the alarm. Maids come running, a boy is dispatched to the police, another for the doctor. Raoul bursts out of the library, alarmed concerned and immediately protective. It almost makes her smile to see how some things change but stay the same.

Some people.

She has changed. It seems like a great slow and utterly obvious revelation that swirls hot and hazy around her as she submits to ministrations of maid and medicine man. They won’t believe her when she says she’s fine so she lets them fuss. Her clothes are stripped, city mud sponged from her skin, bruises inspected, bones examined, eyes checked, pulse taken. “She’s in shock,” the doctor says, “it’s to be expected.”

Is it?

Marriage wasn’t meant to change her this much, set her on this unreeling bewildering path into the thorny dark. Christine watches her husband talk to the doctor, his face anxious and no less beloved than their wedding day more than a year ago. Has it really been so soon and so long?

“They didn’t take your jewellery then,” the maid says when she sees Christine look at the gold ring on her left hand. “No,” she replies automatically. When she turns that wrist, a spasm goes up her arm and the doctor starts forward at her soft cry. They assume the bracelet of finger bruises is a result of the theft. Raoul’s mouth takes on a grim unpleasant line and she stays silent.

Each soul deserves its own mask, keeps its own secrets. Perhaps this is one she had better keep forever, locked away for the good of their marriage, for the wholeness of his heart and hers.

But isn’t that exactly what each dishonest spouse does? She won’t be that, they’re better than that. It was never meant to be like this. No, perhaps it’s a matter of time and place, to share and understand together, to know that there need be no secrets in their marriage, and fully live. That’s the way it should be.

When the doctor leaves, Raoul comes back to her room, nods at the maid who leaves with Christine’s ruined old gown and cloak. Washed and tidied, in a clean nightgown, her wrist bound up in gauze with ointment smeared on her forehead, Christine feels somewhat steadier. She manages a smile as Raoul comes to sit on the bed beside her.

“Christine,” he says in tones of such regret, his hand lifting to brush the curls from her forehead. Raoul has always been comfort. Security and stability, forever her stalwart friend and protector, as the best husband should be. Silent, she leans into his touch and his arms coming around her feel exactly as the haven they should be. She rests her cheek against the thump of his heart, smells the linen of his shirt and the ink splatter somewhere. He had been in the library, doing accounts, taking care of things as he always does, with conscience and responsibility. Duty.

There’s something she never ever wants to be to him, a duty. His face is against her hair and she dislodges both of them when she straightens up and looks at him direct. “I think perhaps I should sleep.”

It’s a little blunt but of course Raoul doesn’t protest. He kisses her cheek goodnight, touches her arm gently and leaves. Curiously detached, Christine lays her face against the cool pillow, watching the flicker of candle by her bed. The shadows dance like smoke on the wall, the flame ripples in a torn ribbon of gold, and she stares for a long while at the pure blue centre.

Perhaps it’s shock, perhaps it’s the changed perception of pleasure and pain. Perhaps it’s finally being faced with what she’s wanted all along. Now at the end of it, she feels like a stranger to herself.

__________________

 

It takes a few days for Christine to recover. When finally her body eases and she can move without pain, she has it all worked out in her head. The servants are given the evening off, the house is still and dark. Waiting.

Christine leaves her room and peers over the stairs to where the library door is shut tight. On silent bare feet, her chemise a shred of white in the shadows, she tries Raoul’s door.

He looks up, distracted, and blinks at the sight of her, the lit taper forgotten in his hand. “Careful,” she says a fraction too late. Raoul curses, drops the flame that winks out. Unthinkingly, he sticks his burned fingers in his mouth, watching her with a slight frown. Christine smiles wryly, closing the door. “Please don’t ask me why I’m here. It might be embarrassing to both of us.” Faintly bemused, he says nothing, eyes careful.

Raoul’s chamber is like his library and the rest of the house, all old dark wood and amber shades, warm and solid, now swallowed in darkness with just the lone flickering candle by his bed. She feels delicate with the way he watches her, a precious wisp of beauty moving towards the light.

“Here,” Christine says soft, “let me.” His fingers are slim and graceful, aristocratic hands with sword calluses and the slight tang of iron. She watches his eyes as her lips move over his hand, sees the alertness that tremors and heats with the slick touch of her tongue into his palm.

“Christine,” he breathes and that’s all the consent she needs. Moves in to claim with mouth on mouth and hands in hair. Raoul kisses her, hungry, holds her firm against him. There’s a possession, a certainty in his grip that she likes very much. Maybe it’s because that time in the library proved her willing. Maybe it’s because he’s been reminded once more that they could lose each other. Whatever it is, it makes Christine bold enough to twine her arms around his neck, pushing herself into his mouth, into his hips. Her body flickers with flame, the living breathing energy of flesh inhabited.

“Wait,” he manages between them, “are you — ”

“I’m fine, Raoul. Kiss me.”

He needs no more telling, clutches at her with lips and fingers. It’s exhilarating, suddenly to be kissed and kissed and by the one person who should claim her only. He urges her towards the bed but Christine stops him, bites his mouth gently as she pushes her hand into his shirt. She wants to see him, wants to strip him and fully know what’s hers by law and sacrament.

Swift and decisive, he lets her undress him, their breath rapid. That fine figure of a vicomte, lean hipped and broad shouldered, tanned and healthy from a life in the sun, hair long and thick in the fashion, unbound across his shoulders. Christine skims her mouth over nipple and rib, fast and thorough, learning the taste of husband skin. He doesn’t react when she swipes her tongue across the spot just below his navel but his hand moves with wonder upon her hair. Christine bites the point of his hipbone, a darkness surging in her mind.

Touch him, teach him, lead them from the solitude of their lonely bodies.

She licks his cock, long quick stripes that have him stirring eager to her mouth. When he’s erect, Christine sucks him in deep, pulling him towards the hollow of her throat. Her hands slide quick up bare thigh and as she leans in, the tight curled warmth of his sexual parts slide into the dip of her collarbone.

Now she topples him, hard and fast, onto the bed, following in a sinuous curve of spine and skin. Raoul gasps as she straddles him. Christine smiles down with a touch of predator at him, her hair tumbling over one shoulder in long loose dark curls to brush against his face. His hand slips from her exposed neck to the tender swell of her breast, curls trailing across his face, clean and sweet smelling, as she moves lower on his body. Oh yes it feels good, so very very good to be atop him, to have her blood race hot at the way he yields to her. 

One lick of his cock and Raoul groans, an audible relinquishment of control. Christine doesn’t hesitate, she swirls her tongue around the base and sucks the curves of him tight into her mouth. Raoul’s thighs go rigid hard as she licks and tongues, learns the rough and smooth and hot scent of him here. Leaving his flesh glistening, she mouths up along the line of his hipbone, and feathers her fingertips down between his spread thighs, down into the secret crease of —

Raoul starts as if he’s been stabbed. His hand snaps around her wrist, his body recoils, and Christine finds herself flung away across the bed. Sprawled, shocked and distraught, she sees him stare at her, that face split with disbelief and horror. Oh god. It was too soon, she didn’t do it right, he didn’t like it, too soon!

“Where did you learn that?” His voice is ripped. Christine doesn’t understand for a few moments, staring at him with her mind splintering in so many ways. “What?”

He looks at her for a long awful moment, his expression going from anguish to a terrible sort of grief. “Christine, have you betrayed me?”

Her throat surges with too many protests, chokes her with horror. And he says, so very quiet and broken. “Where do you go at night, Christine? You don’t think the servants notice, that they worry and ask me? Where do you spend all that money? Is it — ”

Now he feels it. Looks away on a spasm of soulpain. Christine hurts for him, reaches out but he flinches back and fixes her again with that bright gaze. “Christine, there are men who will take advantage of young wives, I know this. I know,” he breaks off and starts again, painfully. “If someone is taking advantage of you, demanding money, I need to know. I can help you. You must,” his eyes burn desperate now, voice passionate, “you must let me help you, Christine.”

Her mouth dry, she only finds one thing to say. “It’s my money.” Which is true, she never touched his money, only took what was her inheritance and her opera earnings from the bank. But it’s entirely the wrong and most foolish thing to say, makes all the colour leave his face. He looks at her, his eyes so bruised.

She’s doing this all wrong.

Exasperated with herself, Christine sits up and catches her husband by the arm. “Raoul, now you listen to me. Listen to me! I haven’t, I haven’t been unfaithful to you.”

Liar.

The word whispers in the back of her mind, in a voice soft and smooth. She struggles on, determined, speaking to his face half hidden by the dark curve of hair. “Raoul, you must believe me. I go to be taught, I went, I learnt. How to be good, how to be right, for you, for us. Raoul, I only ever did this for our, our good.”

He looks at her, first sideways and then full on, disbelief again vivid on his face. “It’s true,” she insists, feeling small and foolish now. Oh god, had it all been a mistake from the very first? Had she been wrong from the very first moment? The misguided wife punished for her naiveté, believing an idealistic lie.

“For us,” he repeats faintly, searching her face.

Christine nods, unhappy. “I know I was disappointing to you, I know we didn’t have the wedding night we could have had.” He colours a little. She feels her own blush rising but forces the words through her constricted throat. “I want us to be happy together, I want everything to be right. I want it to be the way it should be, Raoul! Why shouldn’t it be?”

He stares at her, eyes flickering with conflict. “Christine, these things — ”

“I know we could wait, it might all work out in the end. But I didn’t want us to wait! You were miserable, I was miserable. It was horrible, Raoul. I love you and I know you love me, we should be able to make love properly. It shouldn’t have to be a chore, a duty, for either of us!”

He struggles to understand, that much is obvious. But he feels for her, his eyes concerned as he touches her cheek. “Christine …” She wraps her hand around his wrist, feels naked and soft. “Please don’t be angry, Raoul. I never meant to hurt you. I would never betray you.”

But she did. She had, once before in that other life, by the water in the changing underground dark light. And the memory is too clear in his uneasy face. He can’t quite look at her, merely brings her hand to his mouth. Almost too quiet to hear, he says “Tell me.”

Tell him everything she’s learnt, what she’s seen. And perhaps it’s better to tell instead of shocking him with a show. Halting, Christine feels the words come through her easing throat. Tells him of the first scene, how it was, how she felt, how she watched. Tells him about the lone woman. Raoul can’t look at her, stares instead at their linked hands, his loose hair swerved across one cheekbone, his face reddening as the scenarios grow ever more elaborate. Christine feels her own face warm with a mixture of shame and pleasure. Because, yes, it does feel wicked lovely to tell him these things, to slowly change his perception of her.

The Vicomtesse de Chagny is a lot of things.

And eventually she goes quiet. Trusts that she’s told enough. Yes, perhaps some secrets should stay locked a little longer. It’s a lot for Raoul to absorb and accept, she can see that. Perhaps these things of carnal knowledge are welcomed, even expected of mistresses. But not so of wives and vicomtesses, not for young boys raised to see their mothers and wives as entirely separate from their lovers and mistresses. But now as he lifts his eyes to her, she thinks that perhaps this vicomte and husband might be different.

“So you watched,” he says faintly. Christine nods, feels the lie curl around her soul like a sheer sticky black thing. Raoul looks at her long and hard, silent for such a long time that her stomach begins to roil with nausea. His eyes are so different from —

His eyes are such a clear pure blue, always arresting, always piercing. The eyes of an honest decent man, a good son and responsible citizen, a fair lord and master to servant and tenant alike. They are sky eyes, filled with light.

“Liar.”

It is said so soft that for a moment Christine thinks she hears it only in her head. But it’s her husband’s voice, and those eyes look at her.

“What?” she stammers.

Raoul leans in. Christine catches a sharp breath, unnerved and badly frightened. Those eyes look into hers, vast and pitiless as the sky. And she feels him push her hair back, feels him touch his fingertips to where her neck meets shoulder. 

“Liar.”

Now she remembers with a slow tide of heat all the way up under her skin, remembers teeth fixing there, fingers curling deep inside her, taking another man’s cock inside her.

No. She had never forgotten. And she feels it show clear and vivid across her face.

“Raoul,” she breathes. The air seems to be cracking shattering soft and terrible around her. He’s moving away, off the bed, as slowly and coolly as if he might break too. His voice is cold and precise. “Take what you need and go. Don’t explain, don’t say anything. I don’t want to know who or how many or why, Christine.”

He is putting on a robe, belting it. Distantly, numbly, she notices that his hands shake a little. At the door, he looks back at her just once. It’s as if he looks at a stranger, an abhorrent thing.

“No decent woman behaves like this. And no wife of mine.”

The Vicomtesse de Chagny cannot be a freak.

__________________

 

How does a woman’s mind work so that she believes that an infidelity won’t interfere with the love that stands at the centre of her life? How can she have been so so awfully wrong?

Christine fumbles her way back to her room, a terrible tightness in her chest, a roaring disturbance in her head. How, how could that have happened? She’d thought it through, she’d believed, she’d hoped.

She’d been stupidly spectacularly naïve.

Her breath shuddering, Christine slides to the floor and sits with her back against the solid door, so cold so cold. She stares at nothing, hysteria bubbling up in her throat. It could not have happened. Raoul, of all people. Raoul who had loved her first and best, Raoul to whom she had entrusted her heart, her —

No.

She turns her head sharp on the door, her smooth cheek abrading against old wood. Her soul she had given in the glitter of glass and water, given willingly in and for beauty. He had forgiven her that, loved her despite it and enough to save her from the danger of her own desire.

This he cannot forgive.

He won’t.

Her body begins to break, great heaving horrible sobs tearing from a soundless throat. She cries like a mute animal, blind with scalding tears, pain ripping up through her flesh in a hideous heat, fist against her open mouth.

He didn’t understand. He of all people was supposed to know, had lived through the misery of their bed with her, how could he not —

Her breath catches on a frozen shard of thought. He was supposed to understand. She hadn’t been unfaithful. Never betrayed him with mouth or cunt or heart. She hadn’t.

And now rage spirals up through the burn of agony. How could he not have seen that? She’d said and explained, exposed the shame she’d felt about her own unresponsive body, spoken with difficulty of her deepest fear, and he had seen only the lie. How could he be so, so narrow minded, so limited in his understanding to judge her thus? 

How had he not heard?

Christine clenches her fists and fixes all her fury on the shaft of winter full moonlight that pierces the darkness of the room to fall just beyond her toes. She breathes and breathes, takes all the rage and injustice and betrayal, focuses it within her into a hurt jagged like a searing edged point of ice.

Nothing has ever felt so unfair. And eventually she knows, recognises this white shade of bare bone and twisted sinew. She’s sensed it all her life, feels it now with the final chill of the mortally wounded. She knows what this is.

Men and their ways. For all their sweet words and noble proposals, all their songs of passion and odes of love, women are but chattel and goods. She’d seen it in the opera with the actresses and chorus girls. The wrong smile, the flatter curve, the rebuffed advance, the merest hint of resistance or individuality and there went thousands of feminine careers cut short on masculine whim, female lives aborted with a callous word or dismissive look, misogyny free to be carelessly viciously wielded because there was no challenge to say otherwise. Men guillotined empires and dreams every day and there was nothing to do but sit with hands folded demurely in laps and hope for a new world.

And it wasn’t just the managers, it was the lovers too. Yes, plays were written and sonnets penned, arias composed and goddesses crowned. The woman was adored onstage, idealised and deified. But how long did it take before a real woman was permitted onto that same stage? 

Even then, even now there’s such scope for adoration, a delirious freedom to be revered, to be whores and courtesans to kings and philanderers, lauded and pampered and even loved. But no respectable man would have a working chorus girl or a performing diva for a wife. She’d had to do it too and did it without question because that was the way things were done.

Choose. The man you love or the vocation you live.

What vile sort of choice was that?

It chokes her now, this betrayal of not just heart but soul, the soul that was hers to give through glass or on water or in sacred shroud, her soul that had soared to the brightest light from the deepest dark, that she’d quieted for him, for her, for the dream of them together. All she’d asked and all he’d asked was one simple enormous thing, and yet all these small things of bodies and caresses and averted kisses had served to tear that to tatters. And for what? It rankles in her throat now, sick and cankerous, such love that she had tried to express with skin and fingerprint and the touch of a silent mouth, such love shredded by the knives of his terrible constricted morality.

How does a man’s mind work so that he believes he can keep his mother sister wife daughter locked in a gilt circle of guilt, murdering with every double edged dictum, dividing all the natural unknowable world into two, wife from lover, whore from madonna, vicomtesse from sweetheart, woman from freak?

And her. Ages ago she’d been asked to make a choice too, hadn’t she? Star stream at her feet, Christine looks at her bracelets of finger bruises, now one around each wrist, faded and new. And she laughs, short and bitter, into the light. Oh yes. The stranger in her bed and the stranger in her head, two men to whom she was the same thing, a possession to be handed from one to the other. A precious thing of beauty, all huge dark eyes and white skin, but a thing nevertheless.

Raoul filled her with seed, he’d filled her with song, each with the essence of his own spirit and what does that make her but a pretty porcelain doll with hollow skirt and hollow throat?

It’s with a single cold breath that she raises herself to her feet, catches the glimmer of her reflection across the room. Sweet songbird Christine Daae in her little white chemise, all innocence and stupidity.

No. She won’t have it.

She hadn’t been unfaithful.

But by God and the Magdalene, if he would condemn her, she will earn the sin.

_______________

Christine leaves in the early hours of a frozen winter morning, dressed in her maid’s street clothes, tearless and expressionless. She takes her father’s violin in its battered case and a book of stories that belonged to her mother. She looks neither at the sky nor the people around, keeps her eyes only on the drifts of snow greying on city streets. A Channel grey, perhaps, cold and full of the unknown. The world is still and inward, full of dead white light. She goes to the bank and then to La Maison Vert where she meets briefly with Mme Dedalus and leaves once more.

With her father’s violin case on her lap, Christine Daae sits all day opposite the ruins of what had been the grandest opera in Paris, now caved in, a vast inert chaos of unsafe masonry and exploded insides. The winter day melts around her in the pale sun and she steadily reconstructs every tale from her mother’s book, recites each story in her mind. She breathes and she remembers.

A few ladies of society stop to say a curious hello but she makes little conversation and they go on their way, no doubt to wonder aloud about that strange dark eyed thing and wasn’t she once on the stage?

When night falls in a swathe of clear stars, she returns to La Maison Vert. Mme Dedalus greets her with a nod and shows her to the parlour where a modest dinner is laid. They make no conversation and Christine doesn’t mind that the madam sees how desperately she falls upon the food. With damp feet, chilled fingers, shabby gown and hollow eyes, it feels as if a great invisible circle has completed. There’s a certain grim dignity, a satisfaction in this condition.

After dinner is drawn a hot bath. Unattended, Christine washes herself, the warmth a peculiar sensation that doesn’t quite manage to permeate through to the cold little hollow at her core. She bends forward and puts her face into the water, opens her eyes under to see the warp and wave of her own skin. Nobody dries her, nobody massages or prettifies her with perfumes or creams.

Before a tall narrow mirror, she brushes out her long dark curls and lets them hang loose. This time the gown is black, sheer and lustrous, high necked and long sleeved, fitted to her slender curves glimmering through, monastic and deviant one last time.

This is the mask. Jet black, soft and sleek, detailed with scale and feather, beaded and embossed, a sinister half cast of beauty. It fits over her head, frees her hair to flow down her back, veils her eyes with translucent black and cuts high away over her cheekbones, leaves her mouth and jaw bare. Christine lifts her chin, turns her head from side to side, and smiles soft and chilling at what she sees in the glass.

Finally she looks how she feels.

Aminta empowered.

The brothel is silent tonight. No smoke, no perfume, no music and no laughter. The lamps are turned low along the creeping green and purple brocade walls, and the madam is nowhere to be seen. Barefoot, Christine goes up the stairs, feeling at once detached and tremulous. The world has changed, she’s changed it and now she feels the full shape of this journey, this transmutation.

Perhaps she hadn’t known at the start what she did but now, here, moving towards the plain black door, she breathes in with the knowledge of resolution. Every step is one step further from an abandoned future, one step closer to an impossible new wild world yawning in an abyss of uncertainty before her.

Christine walks without hesitation. Pushes open the door and locks it behind her. The room stretches long and black before her, this bare bleak performance space for no audience but her wilful imagination.

There dawns the single white light splitting the darkness to rest upon the tall high backed throne, black and bevelled and empty. She comes to stand beside it, one hand on the edge, looking into the darkness, her heart thudding hard and calm.

In silence, the woman comes. Her hair a waterfall of shining black, identically clad but she is still so very different. Unafraid, Christine watches her approach, leading the tall bone pale man. He is naked, blindfolded and bound. In silence, the woman stops before Christine, her face perfectly expressionless. In silence, Christine holds out her hand, palm up, and is given the handle of that black leather leash. She closes her fingers and it feels exactly as solid and powerful as she’d hoped. The woman inclines her head and departs the way she came.

And tilting his bowed head, he says in that dulcet murmur “I thought you might leave us for good. Have you missed me, Madame Morte?”

Despite everything, Christine finds her mouth curving, darkly delighted. He would of course make this interesting and she’d known it when she’d said he could speak if he wanted.

Now, as she curls the leather strap around her wrist, winding him closer, he says reflectively “Madame plays a dangerous game.” Forced to take a step forward, he adds with that same curious hint of concern “I hope you realise this …”

The light turns his flesh to marble, perfect and incorruptible, and Christine feels the same but entirely different, as if her body has turned to the darkest onyx. She says nothing, he need be told nothing and she will not be swayed. Steadily, Christine pivots on the spot, her wrist flexing as the leash guides him slowly around. He finds his footing easy, always graceful, and knows well enough to stay perfectly still, listens careful as she circles him, the leather winding against his white flesh.

One small hand on his shoulder and he sits without a word, slightly wary but more curious it seems. Christine lets the leash drop, draped over the strong corded curve of his thigh, as she takes up those long fine hands. He says nothing, merely inclines his head and lets his hands lie still in hers. He’ll waste no breath if she won’t, that she understands.

Romance is very well in the sunshine and by candlelight, the romance of flowers and music and vows never to be broken. But here in the darkness of the soul is only the mute animal hurt one too many times and now will not be denied.

Tearless, Christine traces the long hard bones of musician wrists and actor fingers, remembers how he would spread and contort them in expressions of so much fine demonic theatrical loveliness. He breathes and thinks about her, she feels it, but is it this mysterious madame or that sweet young thing who fills his head?

Christine Daae is and isn’t.

Silent, she strokes the line of tightly bound material holding wrist against wrist, pulse against pulse. Unknot and untie. Undo. The black strip coils on the floor between their bare feet and she watches the elegant bare curve of his head turn as she guides his arms apart and his hands find the bevelled armrests, his fingers curling along the ends. He doesn’t like this. The lean shoulders tense, the slim warped mouth tightening. But he says nothing, merely inclines his head. Waits.

That throne, black and forbidding, a dark sinister majesty made all the starker and eerier by the perfectly pale powerfully muscled man whose lines unconsciously alter to fit the pose, the shoulders broadening, back straightening. Ever the performer who senses, knows intuitively just what the role needs. Christine sees it, smiles with the faintest pleasure.

He lifts his head, the smooth and schizoid halves of his face cool and composed. The black strip bisects that face, renders him unreadable even when he should be vulnerable. He should look like a man facing execution, facing the wicked sharp blade.

But he doesn’t. There’s too much of his own subtle power in that calm. Too much Christ and not nearly enough Iscariot.

It ripples through her, a slow terrible earthquake breaking apart her calm. Infidel and unfaithful and this, this is how it is at the core of her, this swirling welling waking upward spiral of dark metal and black fire that surges rises through vein and sinew and soul.

Magdalene Aminta and no Christ but Iscariot Juan.

She steps close, his legs part for her. And it’s easy, far too easy for her to catch the back of his head, tip his face up. And seal that final betrayal, take what had always been hers to have and conquer. Christine kisses him, kisses him like once and never before, and lets all her abandoned futures burn up in the furious revolution of betrayal.

She kisses him and he stiffens, one hand grips her arm in shock but oh god the strange wonderful slip scar swerve of his lips. It dizzies her and she pulls back, pulls his hand from her arm. His face is flushed but he doesn’t protest when she sets his hands back on the curved wood and slaps her palms down, holds until she sees his fingers curl in grim acceptance. His mouth is tight and unpleasant and she doesn’t care, surges forward to catch it with hers.

This time he’s ready for her and kisses back. He kisses like she knew he would, full of teeth and tongue, not gentle and so so scarily hungry. Those darkest flames roar through her, shock and rage and need and the reeling physicality of contact, of invasion. Christine responds fiercely, wrests control back, knows she hurts him with force and teeth, steals his breath and overpowers him with the push of her body over his, dominated.

They kiss and kiss and kiss, steal air between the slipping of mouth and the catch of lips on skin, the thrust and bite of tongue and teeth, the terrible beautiful suck and clench of insides. No touch, no caress, they devour of each other, learning invading sating and re-addicting with each re-created breath from breath. She feels it right through her body, the shake and fury of sensation, heat and heart pounding liquefying rushing with every taste and thrust of him, until she knows nothing but the clamour of ignoble lust.

Christine climbs into his lap like a blind instinctual needful creature, moans with the way he groans and twists up into her, moans with the slide of sheer fabric between her nude body and his, so much hot slick flesh separated so thin. She rubs against him, feels his muscles tense, knows he grips the curled ends of the armrests, feels the fierce tremor of restraint as he pushes himself up into her mouth. Maddened with sensation, she sucks and bites a little with the catch of fine black against her tight nipple, feeds on his sincere groan when she pushes her breasts against the shuddering contour and bone of his chest.

Christine rocks down, mindless with the sudden drench of her cunt, and it’s a whole new insanity of urgency to feel his cock hard and pushing against her belly, slipping between her thighs. He snarls, and through the silky black gown, his cocktip finds the heat of her cunt, and a cry mingles in the meet of their mouths.

Now, now, Christine wants to scream, her cunt a wide open aching hungry thing ever deepening up into the living core of her. Breathless, she pulls herself higher across his thighs, they lose each other’s mouth but as she lifts, he ducks his head and the close of his mouth on her unbearably sensitised nipple makes her vision short out with such sweet relief and rabid lust. Her fingers slip on the sleek curve of his head, looks down at this unholy tenderness, shivers at how he moans around her flesh and bites gently, how he tongues from nipple to the tender swell of breast, so wicked beautiful through the thinnest wet fabric. She wants his mouth back on hers, wants too much and wants it all now, to take it all from him in violence and tenderness.

He turns his face up to hers, blind and flushed and needy, gleaming all down his chest with sweat and the finest trail of golden hair, nipples hard and red, his knuckles white against ebony. She looks down the contour of his body, the hard white thighs spread for her, draped over with translucent black. All for her. His mouth, his breath, his flesh, his cock arching full and erect, blood hard and pearling slightly.

Christine grips the back of the chair, lifts up and drags her gown out of the way. He arches with her, utters a heartfelt wordless sound that ripples right through her, the harmonics enough to wet her cunt anew. And it’s one easy moment of vengeful righteous devastation to twist forward and down, to engulf his cock with her cunt, to swallow his voice with her mouth.

The world caves in, implodes in a vast violent chaos of too much flesh threatening to break them both apart. Christine feels smothered, taken over, breathless with the terrible beautiful fragmentation of wet and hot and hard and high and deep. His cock fills her with impossible pressure, living strange, and this time her cunt clenches with the soul painful desire to have and hold and keep and devour, this glorious terrifying power of her spirit over his flesh. She will have him. Grips his shoulders, grips his face, sees how he struggles to breathe, struggling with that same primitive overwhelming imperative to fuck and fuck and be fucked. “Let me,” he says rough and lilting, “let me touch you.”

Permission is hers to give, her body is her own. Her choice. 

Christine reaches behind her and takes his hands, watches his face change as she places them with a breath on her hips. “Jesus,” he says, fingers spreading and contorting, and she laughs soft and low in her throat, leans in to betray and betray again. He will blaspheme with voice and hand and cock, delirious eager to lose himself in her, and she will devour him down.

It’s difficult for her at first but he guides her with steady hands, touches her nowhere else. He breathes hard and fast, lets her set the pace, and Christine rocks down, rocks forward, grinding twisting down on cockflesh thrusting up, rubbing her just right. She digs her fingers into the muscle of his shoulder, her hair stinging loose and sharp against their faces. No oils, no creams, there is only the scent of her clean skin and his clean skin and the sweat that sheens them both, the rich rising scent of cock and cunt between them, so bare and primeval and intoxicating. She learns the rhythm, learns the strength of her body and his and pushes it, a relentless rhythm stripped of harmony or melody. 

It’s a vicious animalistic pace that gives the lie to the mask she wears and the blindfold he keeps, too raw and honest and devastating for the costumes they wear. She catches glimpses of his gasping schizoid face through the translucent black over her eyes. The red of his mouth, the white of his face, the black of the final game they play, it’s a carnal beauty all depraved and degenerative, full of death and endings.

She fucks herself on him, fucks him in herself, fucks and fucks and fucks until she feels her soul fly loose, arcing through her in a black cataclysmic fury. Bliss breaks through her, breaks her against him and it’s an ecstasy riddled with the most awful loss.

_________________

 

He dares to console her. He of all people. Her face wet with anguish against the living scars and ruin of his own, Christine realises too slow and too fast. That his hands are warm and tender on her back, his mouth turned against her cheek, murmuring words of solace.

She tears away, pushes and turns, her back a livid line of black and marble. Breathe, Christine, breathe. Summon up the breath of ice, that coldfire of self righteous vindictive rage.

“Very well,” he says eventually. And there is that cool edge she knows so well, that sliver fine quicksilver temper.

Men and their uses. She goes to bind his hands once more, stoops to gather the leash from where it splays on the black floor. His cock has left a space inside her, she feels it, a sated yet hungry ache that’s pleasing and infuriating at the same moment. She will not be betrayed by her body again.

No, she’ll use the both of them. It’s the only way through this darkness of her soul.

Out through the black door, the leash wrapped around his wrists, into the long brocaded corridor of silence that shimmers and shivers. She feels marked, changed, like he’s all over her, his sweat on her skin, his taste in her mouth, his seed dripping down her cunt.

It’s wrong and it’s bad and she’s so far gone what should it matter at all, what would it matter to anyone but her? Her world is her body and she’ll destroy it at her own vicious whim.

Christine turns without warning, hauls the leash in a hard wide circle, fast. He lurches off his feet. She yanks on the leash, feels the twist high in her arm, and he falls to his knees. Bone hits wood, a sickening crunch, and Christine’s got her back to the wall, her skirt flung high on her splayed thighs and one hand gripping his chin.

This the worship debasement of whores and madonnas. He smells her, a raw knifed growl of lust and arousal deep in his throat as his cheekbone slides against her inner thigh. Breath on the curls of her, the blindfolded face resentful and yearning. She slides her hand along the smooth contour of his face and gets that faint catlike murmur of sensation quivering the fine eyelid, a subtle shiver of skin into her palm. She traces the line of his lips and he mouths her fingertips, lets her push and part on a throaty sigh. 

She doesn’t need to say, he curls forth a whorish tongue and rises up on his knees. His bound hands brush the inside of her calf and oh lord the sheer depravity of his tongue moving into her, licking along, parting the curls, tasting her cunt. Slick firm touch so unlike finger or cock, insidious foreign organic. Christine whimpers, knees buckling a little, catches herself against the patterned wall. Her fingers digging into the smooth shaven back of his head, he pushes in deeper and her head whirls with the lick and suck. He sucks, the horror and delight of it, sucks on the messy mingled fluids of them. He angles up and licks, moans hungrily, thrusts his tongue into her and pushes his shoulders up, spreading her thighs. 

Then he pulls back and says “Let me have my hands.”

Let.

And she’s maddened enough with power to want to say no. Almost opens her mouth and remembers just in time. So she swipes her fingers across his mouth and wants to laugh when he bites at her touch, clearly frustrated. “Power games are all very well — ”

He should talk, as if power hadn’t been exactly what he craved and lorded over the lot of them, over her. Christine curls her fingers into the rack and ruin of his face, watches as he refuses to flinch at the score of her nails.

“ — but let me do this.” His mouth turns up in a curiously beautiful sneer. “After all, am I not yours for this pursuit of pleasure?” His face tilts up to her like some treacherous debauched devotee, a fine eyebrow arching with that sweet voice. “Your pleasure.”

Deviant devious man but she’ll take it, he’s right. He rebels. As she knew and maybe hoped he would. Forces the leather off his wrists, rises in a heart stopping moment, and forces her thighs apart.

He feeds on her.

Christine has no voice, her vision fragments into flickers of green and purple and black and ivory. Up against the wall, his hands around her thighs, one leg over his shoulder, the slide and drape of her silky gown over him, slide of her back against the brocade. He feeds on her, tongue and teeth and breath, vicious invasive and pure delirious delight. It goes on for ever. She comes and comes, skin blistering with sensation, mind dissolving in terrible beautiful bursts. Christine comes more and harder than ever before.

When finally she falls, he catches her on a rise. Christine drags his mouth to hers, sucks the taste of them both, sex and slime and sin, and there is the slide of his half hard cock into the sticky curls of her, her thighs wrapping around his waist. He pushes her further up the wall, the muscles of his back moving subtle and feline under her hands. The need, the lust of him, his mouth seeking the underside of her jaw, teeth into the side of her throat.

She knows this. The hunger, the power, him seeking to dominate once more, and so she pushes him hard. The separation of flesh from flesh is such cruelty. Christine snatches the strap from the floor and as he stumbles and falls, she loops the leather around a single wrist and pulls it tight, pulls him upright. Satisfying cruelty. The blindfold is askew but he rights it, face turned down, breathing heavily. 

He will submit once more. He knows the rules, break them as he does. She doesn’t need to remind him.

“Fine,” he says bitterly, “you’re not done yet.”

__________________

 

Christine undoes the blindfold. From behind him, she frees his hands and then takes away the strip of black, watches his reaction in the mirror.

He tenses like a wild animal, frozen with shock and quickly overwhelming rage. Because there he is, clear as day, in the glass, shorn and naked and ravaged, reflected back. And she behind his shoulder, a black masked silent thing. 

The blue eyes seize on her image, speechless with fury. And when he moves, she’s ready. He lunges away, she catches the movement, intercepts him as if they might have rehearsed. The noose of leather slips over his head, his own momentum catches him fast, pull him up short. 

He has to stop, has to stay, shocked anew. 

Christine winds the other end of the leather strap calmly around her wrist and tugs inexorably until he has no choice but to sit, the band of black now firm around his white working throat. He takes a few moments to regain composure, then looks coldly around. “I was told Madame paid a great amount for tonight’s entertainment. I had no idea it was quite so much.”

Enough to overrule his conditions. If he feels betrayed, so be it. 

She smiles. Her mask of bird black dragon smiles back out of the glass. At him, at her. A sinister omen in an opera of purity and she feels it full and clear.

For it’s a room of white. No coffin, no window. White gleams from subtle embossed walls to plush carpet, from the large crystal chandelier overhead that reflects moon white light on them, on the wide unpostered unbound bed done up in material of such rich stuff it glistens like sin. On the heap of pillows lies a single red rose, green stemmed and thorny. Its head is torn to shreds, petals of red scattered across white.

He looks from that to her, thoughtful and sharp. Christine stares back, refusing to be intimidated. She twitches the leather and he flinches, a touch of displeasure thinning his mouth as he looks straight ahead, slavish and defiant.

The thought makes her smile as she reaches under the pillows. “Very nice,” he remarks. That groove appears by the corner of his mouth, subtle and lovely, without humour. “I hope Madame gets her money’s worth.”

It’s such a perfect segue that Christine can’t resist. She puts her small fine hand on the back of his head, that delicious vulnerable contour, and makes him look in her direction. Watches his cool face as she draws from beneath the pillows an unsubtle unpretty blood red artificial cock.

She had turned all colours of shock and horror when Mme Dedalus had made the suggestion. It was appalling, hideous, abominable. And that’s exactly why she accepted.

Now he looks at the lurid toy she holds. “Ah. I didn’t think you’d manage it.”

That stings, the realisation that he was told and she was discussed. Of course. Nevertheless. Discomfited, Christine pulls on the leash, turns his chin up with her hand, and kisses her malevolent marionette on his mocking mouth.

It always changes when they kiss. The world changes, she feels changed, and he always changes beneath her mouth. He leans up into her, a spine and shoulder twist of yearning. It dizzies her a little, the tenderness and threat of him, this dichotomy that is nothing new. Christine slides her hands down the contours of his bare arms, seeking skin as she tastes his tongue and feels his breath in her throat. He leans back into her, makes her so aware of the gossamer black gown barely veiling all the flesh and skin of her. 

She sighs into his mouth, their lips part for air, and she reaches behind her, feeling liquid and lustrous all over. The gown fastens in a tie at her nape. Christine reaches her hand under her hair and pulls the knot free. She sways back from him, silent and sinuous, and he twists to follow, reaching for her. She strips the sleeves down her arms and the front of her gown falls in a swathe of silky black around her waist.

That burning blue look of visceral appreciation feels as good as any applause, as exhilarating as the burn of stage lights and the roar of sound. She catches his hands, tangles their fingers and laughs silently as he pulls her forward and kisses her fierce. Silken black slips between them but oh it’s flesh and flesh and the moan of sensation as she climbs into his lap and his hands slide up along the bare skin of her back. Christine twines her arms around his neck, thrilling with the incredible rub of her bare nipples against the muscle of his chest, the warmth of his flesh against hers, the grain and drag of skin on skin. She traces her fingertips against the grooves of his face, touches the corner of his mouth under hers. He kisses the tips of her fingers and leans in, breathes her air, those blue eyes dark and steady. As sure and deliberate as the long fine hands that he slides along her ribs to shape around the slight swelling curves of her breasts. Christine’s heart trips, her throat closes. Because he rubs his thumbs once across her sudden erect nipples and the sensation shoots tight and vicious all through her.

He watches her as he touches her, watches only her dark veiled eyes as he tumbles her back into the slipping white sheets, strips the gown away and follows to cover her body with all the long sleek contours of his own. Christine smells crushed rose, writhes at the unbearable gorgeosity of white satin and white skin all hot and smooth and cool. It’s too much. She cries out, cunt wet, and cries out again, clutches at his head when he skims his wet mouth from nipple to navel. He sweeps an elegant hand from the top of her thigh up the side of her body, following the dip and rise of hip and waist over breast to the curve of shoulder, and grips her chin with firm fingers, makes her look at him.

“You want so very much, don’t you, Morte?”

His eyes are not entirely blue, how had she ever thought that? They are a shade of changeable blue green, flecked and deep. He has sea eyes, filled with a dark abyss brilliance.

“Be careful,” he tells her and his voice is soft, his mouth is soft with regret when he kisses her. Lets her push him back and down so he’s against the pillows, looking up at her atop him. Nude and feeling powerful for it, Christine brings the toy from among the snarled sheets. Black straps trail from the deep red shaft and she blushes again. Is it a matter of courage? Can she really do this? Penetrate as she was penetrated, fuck as she was fucked?

He must see her doubt because his hand comes to circle her wrist. And the sight of compassion on that malformed sensitive face confuses her even more. He watches her in silence. Christine reaches out her free hand and flicks the rose stem off the pillow. There’s the finest line of red across the curve of his smooth cheekbone, it seems a delicate sort of rape, terrible and beautiful. Her heart shaking, Christine leans in and licks the thinnest taste of blood from the taut bone and flesh of his face. His eyes are closed, the lashes fair and flickering against pale skin, when she draws back.

And yes, she knows her want has been her undoing as his had been for him. But it is her making too.

She doesn’t need him to teach her this final lesson.

Christine moves off. She bends her head, the curls of her hair falling around her shoulders, around her face, shielding and cloistered. Sitting back on her ankles, she knows she is watched, feels the moment shape white and clear in the still air.

The world is hers and she’ll remake it in her own image.

Christine lifts her head, looks directly at him, and undoes the back of her mask. It falls from her hand, soft and worthless. Because it was never about getting into the core of him so much as revealing the core of her own self.

And he goes so still he might as well be made from marble, those eyes fixed on her bare face, on her huge dark eyes. She watches him, tensed and yet curious, sees how the blood begins to beat hard at his temple, how the strong throat begins to work with agitation. His eyes start to storm, wild and furious. 

This time when he lunges, she doesn’t move. 

He lunges out of bed as if he can’t get away from her fast enough, as if he doesn’t trust himself to be around her.

“Did you know?”

It’s him who flinches at the sound of her voice. She sees it, how he stops short at the door, the bone moon light glinting off the blade of his shoulder. His fingers curl into the palm and it’s a few moments of visible struggle before he half turns back, mouth tight. He can’t look at her.

It had always been her voice. It had first been her voice that tied him to her. Another thing she had never quite grasped, all the quiet ways and means of power. Was it merely feminine, sexual, artistic or something unique to the two of them? Christine watches, subtly amused and unafraid. There is nothing he could do to her that she couldn’t do back. She knows this now. There is no way he could hurt her without hurting himself. Nothing has ever seemed clearer.

Nude, she sits calmly with her hands on her thighs, her hair curling wild around her shoulders. And sees quite distinctly the moment he decides to face this, face her. He turns, the shoulders hard and lean, his face cool but those eyes are wild and seizing upon her. The rage, the disbelief, the sheer devouring recognition. 

Still he says nothing, begins to pace as the thoughts click fast and hard in his head. She sees him thinking rapidly about her, about this situation, and it’s entirely amusing to let him work through it on his own. He paces, eyeing her, too agitated to stay still. She asks again. “Did you know it was me?”

“What?”

He laughs. The stormy eyes flash over mirror and white sheets. It’s a bitter incredulous mocking laugh. “Yes. No. Perhaps I did. Perhaps — ”

He stops and stares hard at her, those thoughts clicking ever faster. She crosses one knee over the other, watches and lets him put it all together. That his angelic songbird and Madame Morte were one and the same, that she --- she! --- had been the instigator of all this debauchery.

“I used you.”

“Yes,” he says slowly, eyes unwavering. “You did.” Those eyes narrow, intensify. “You,” he says with soft clear emphasis, “did.”

Her name shimmers between them, the way he used to say it, yearning sensuous and suffocating. But he can’t bring himself to say it now, she understands this. It’s so very delicious. Feeling almost cruel, Christine props her elbow on her knee and puts her chin on her hand, looks at him. “Won’t you ask me why?”

His mouth curls, those eyes so curious now. “No,” he replies, drawing out the vowel with increasing amusement. Christine tenses, realising too late. He grins at her, startlingly beautiful, and she uncrosses her legs, stands up, alarmed enough to want to leave.

“Did M’sieur Le Vicomte have a bit of trouble?” 

“Fuck you.”

“Yes, and you paid for it, didn’t you?” His voice is like a whiplash, the mouth cruel and lovely. Christine laughs. “I hardly think you have any right to the moral ground.”

“No more than you.”

It’s a fair point. Christine looks away, mutinous. This isn’t how it was supposed to go. He was supposed to scream and storm around, not be like this.

“Such language,” he murmurs and she knows, just knows he’s stepping closer. He would intimidate her with his sexuality. Face averted, Christine doesn’t move, not even when he touches his fingers to the curls along her jaw. “Is this fit language for a vicomtesse, for a wife?”

She turns her head to meet his eyes. “Is this fit occupation for a composer of operas, such an impresario?”

His mouth quirks, fine and sardonic. “Some might say yes, you know.”

“Yet you say you’re doing penance.”

He doesn’t like that. With a dangerous glint of betrayal, he takes his hand away and steps back. “What I do has nothing to do with you — ”

“Liar.”

He catches his breath, lifts his chin and strives for composure. “I told you once. Go home.”

“I don’t listen to you any more.”

He stares at her for a long considering moment, something like admiration glimmering in the changeable eyes. That groove beside his mouth curves down. “No, you don’t, do you? My, my,” he murmurs ever so sweet and dulcet, “how you’ve changed … ”

Yes. Oh yes. Finally.

Christine takes a step into his space, feels like she steps ever closer to empty space. It’s a dangerous game she begins, the final scene of this twisted opera. And maybe he’ll follow her lead, maybe he won’t. Carefully, she says “You won’t drag me back into the dark.”

His eyes flare. “You entered willingly,” he retorts. “I never forced you. You invited me, you took my hand.” His voice softens. “You wore my ring.”

Christine’s skin thrills. “And you gave me away.” Her voice barely shakes, eyes locked on his. “You passed me off to another man, never even consulted me about it. I didn’t know enough to stand up to you on my own, didn’t know nearly enough of anything.” She takes a breath and it feels like she walks out over the abyss. “I made my choice and you changed it for me.”

He stares at her for several endless moments, composure forgotten. His face is like glass, so painfully clear, every reaction readable. The astonishment, confusion, how his eyes flicker into awe, the blues intensify with wonder and disbelief. But then.

His mouth twists up. “A noble gesture.”

But he doesn’t step away. And she watches as his tone shades between grief and mockery. “You would have regretted it and grown miserable. You would have hated me. A tyrant, a murderer, a freak. Remember?”

He smiles at her, a half curl of such terrible humour. “Come now, it’s a pretty exercise in what may have been. But — ”

“Would I?”

He stops and stares at her. Christine smiles inwardly. “It was still my choice to make,” she says.

And now the game ends, no more roles or masks. Now his cynicism and mockery falls away, he searches her expression with such disbelieving yearning hope. Now after everything, he doesn’t dare touch her, unable to believe but wanting so much.

It’s up to her. 

Would it be unfair to kiss him now? To remind him that she is both whore and madonna and entirely herself, to remind him how very good they are together in the flesh? She could seduce him with mouth and breast and cunt, rely upon his flesh lust and heart desire for her. Tumble him back into the sinful white sheets and take him into her core of searing white heat, devour him down in throat and cunt. She could use every trick she’s learnt from him and here, take every moan and gasp and groan as consent and acquiescence. Consent through skin on skin, breath to breath, the living vise give and grip of insides, all the language and conversation of need inscribed and configured in the grain and whorl of skin on skin.

If she kissed him, everything would change again. And she could change it for him.

Careful, she lifts and shapes her hand to his face, doesn’t even notice whether it’s the smooth or scarred side. Sees how his breathing stops. How his body tremors and recognises her touch. How his soul seems to fill the brilliance of those sea eyes, expressive and alive.

“Christine,” he breathes. 

His hand comes to cover hers. And that’s when he notices. There is no gold on her finger. His eyes darkening, he draws her hand away and looks questioningly at her. 

“I don’t belong to him,” Christine says through a clear throat. Her heart breaks with quiet grim truth, some part of her is still horrified at this daring. But it is truth. 

“And I don’t belong to you.”

She turns her hand over in his and they both look down to where her fingers lie small and fine and strong in his palm. Quietly, with an edge of challenge he says “This is very brave of you. Are you sure of what you do?”

No more a wife, no more a vicomtesse. Christine Daae banished from society, from the drawing rooms and balls and garden parties, all the glittering gowns and hearty dinners, all the comfort and security of moneyed warmth. She could disappear across choppy grey waters, nobody once more.

What does she throw away and for what? Who?

Christine tilts her face up, waits until he meets her eyes. He could be noble and refuse. That wouldn’t be nobility, it would be arrogance, to deny her the choice. But oh he wants her so much. It shows in the sea blue glitter of that hungry adoring eye, in the barest touch of his fingers to her smooth throat.

“You asked me once to choose. Ask me again.”

**Author's Note:**

> References:  
> Every day in every way: from Some Mothers Do ‘Ave ‘Em. Couldn’t resist. Heh.  
> When you make a decision: paraphrased somewhat from the movie Persuasion.  
> Lettie: From Some Mothers too, Frank’s grandfather misnaming Betty.  
> trials and tribulations: okay, yes, was listening to Jesus Christ Superstar too.  
> round ripe heart: Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds.  
> delirium and delight: um, Gaiman. Always.  
> Mm?: Some Mothers again.  
> They call her the dead rose: ahahaha, inadvertent Nick Cave paraphrase.  
> harsh light of day: Buffy episode title.  
> The silver roses are totally borrowed from Terry Pratchett’s Maskerade.  
> The nightmare child is from Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre.  
> interesting shadow: Nick Cave again.  
> Embarrassing to both of us: inadvertent paraphrase from Pride & Prejudice, the BBC series.  
> How does … centre of her life: paraphrased from Parcel Arrived Safely: Tied With String, Michael Crawford.  
> body … to break: paraphrased from Devendra Banhart.  
> The throne sex scene is hugely inspired by a certain episode of Buffy, season six.  
> Omg, I realised way belatedly where I got she fucks and fucks and fucks from: Epilogue, Dan Spielman. Argh. *whimpers*  
> a bit of trouble: so couldn’t resist the classic Some Mothers dig.  
> the smooth or scarred side moment is Buffy, season one or two, I think.  
> his hand comes to cover hers is inspired by Kuch Kuch Hota Hai.  
> And naturally, a colossal amount of Phantom Of The Opera quotes and paraphrases.


End file.
